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# LIBRARY OF CONGRESS J 






I UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. § 




LECTURES 







POPULAR EDUCATION; 

DELIVERED TO THE 

EDINBURGH ASSOCIATION FOR PROCURING INSTRUCTION IN 

USEFUL AND ENTERTAINING SCIENCE, IN . 

APRIL AND NOVExMBER, 1833, 

AND PUBLISHED 

BY REaUEST OF THE DIRECTORS OF THE ASSOCIATION. 



By GEORGE COM 




' The efforts of the people are still wanting for the purpose of promoting 
Education; and Parliament will render no substantial assistance, until the 
people themselves take the matter in hand with energy and spirit, and the de- 
termination to do something.' — The Lord Chancellor's Speech at TorkylOth 
October, 1833. 



FIRST AMERICAN EDITION — WITH ADDITIONS BY THE AUTHOR. 



BOSTON- 
MARSH, CAPEN & LYON. 
1834. 






Entered according tc the Act of Congress, in the year 1834, by 

Marsh, Capen & Lyon, 
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Dis. of Mass. 



/f 



f" 



BOSTON: ^ 

' James B. Dow, Printer, > 
! 122 Washington-st. ) 



PREFACE 

TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 



In presenting the following Lectures to the people 
of the United States of America, I use the freedom 
to offer to their consideration a few preliminary re- 
marks. When a British author warns the inhabitants 
of a foreign country against undue encouragement of 
manufactures, he is listened to with great suspicion ; 
the belief being general, that he is actuated by a self- 
ish desire to preserve for his countrymen the profits 
of manufacturing industry, at the expense of the na- 
tion whom he addresses. Nevertheless, I conceive 
it allowable to state what I know to be truth, leaving 
every one to give it such a reception as it may ap- 
pear to himself to deserve. 

In Britain, a vast population has been called into 
existence, and trained to manufacturing industry; 
and their labor is supposed, by many, to be the 
source of the wealth, happiness, and glory of the na- 
tion. That the skill and industry of this portion of 
the people have greatly contributed to the riches of 
the country, is indisputable ; but the happiness of the 
laborious individuals who have conferred this boon, 
has unfortunately not kept pace with the wealth which 



4 PREFACE. 

they have produced to their country. Several mil- 
lions of human beings have been trained to the man- 
ufacture of articles of commerce, and are unfit for 
every other occupation. In consequence of the in- 
crease of their own numbers, and improvements in 
machinery, the supply of labor has, for many years, 
outstripped the demand for it, and wages have fallen 
ruinously low. 

By an unfortunate coincidence, much of the ma- 
chinery of modern construction can be managed by 
children. The parent, who, by his own labor, for 
twelve hours a day, is able to earn only seven shil- 
lings a week, adds to his income one shilling and 
sixpence, or two shillings a week, for each child 
whom he can send to the manufactory ; and by the 
united wages of the family, a moderate subsistence 
may be eked out. The parents and children, how- 
ever, are reduced to a hopeless condition of toil ; 
and starvation stares each of them in the face, when 
they cease to live in combination. Mental culture, 
and moral and intellectual enjoyment, are excluded 
by penury and labor. The system tends constantly 
to increase the evils of which it is the source. 
Young persons of both sexes, when they come to 
maturity, find themselves scarcely able to subsist, by 
their own labor ; whereas, if they can add the scan- 
ty income of three or four children to their own, 
their condition is, in some degree, improved ; — be- 



PREFACE. 



cause house-rent, and the expense of furniture and 
fuel are not increased by the wants, in proportion to the 
contributions of the young. AduUs are thus tempt- 
ed — nay, almost driven by necessity — to contract 
early marriages, to rear a numerous population, devo- 
ted to the same employments with themselves, and 
in this way to add to the supply of labor, already in 
excess. The children grow up, and in their turn 
follow the same course ; and thus, however widely 
the manufactures of Britain may have extended, 
there has, for many years, existed an ignorant, starv- 
ing, and miserable population, more than adequate 
to the performance of the labor required. 

The reflecting and benevolent mind sees, in this 
state of things, the punishment which Providence 
inflicts on a nation which hastens to be rich, to the 
neglect of moral and religious improvement ; and it 
desires to provide a remedy for so great an evil. 
Hitherto, however, none that promises to be effec- 
tual has been discovered. The only one that pre- 
sents a favorable aspect, is, that of limiting the hours 
of labor, increasing the mental cultivation of the peo- 
ple, and, if possible, inducing them to postpone the 
age of marriage, and dedicate their children to other 
pursuits, so that the competitors for employment in 
manufactures may be diminished in number, and 
wages may eventually rise. 

The circumstances of the United States are so 



6 PREFACE. 

different, that the lesson afforded by the operative 
manufacturers of Britain may be supposed not at all 
to apply to them. Happily this is at present the 
case : but the tendency of manufactures in every 
country, where personal liberty and property are se- 
cure, is to increase, and ultimately to become exces- 
sive ; and a wise legislature, instead of fostering, 
should place around them such statutory restraints 
as may prevent them from becoming a national calami- 
ty. One of the most indispensable of these regula- 
tions, appears to me to be, to limit the hours of la- 
bor, so that the operatives shall not have their whole 
lives dedicated to the mere creation of wealth, but 
shall have a portion of every day left free for the cul- 
tivation of their rational powers ; and the second is, 
to provide the means of communicating sohd and 
useful information to this and every other class of the 
community. The inhabitants of the United States 
enjoy so many natural advantages, and are cramped 
by so few artificial barriers of private interest, that 
they are more favorably situated than any other peo- 
ple, for exhibiting man in his legitimate character — 
a religious, moral, and intellectual being. If the fol- 
lowing Lectures shall, in any degree, promote this 
end, the author will have attained the highest object 
of his ambition. 

23 Charlotte Square, \ * 

Edinburgh, 1st January, 1834. ) ^ 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

Page. 

Utility of Education 7 

View of Man's position on Earth 10 

Physical Nature prepared for him 10 

His faculties adapted to its constitution 13 

Hence knowledge of that constitution necessary to his 

welfare '17 

Man is guided not by Instinct, but by Reason 18 

Reason cannot act with advantage without knowledge, 

founded on observation and experience > 20 

Present state of Education 24 

Languages 24 

Origin of study of Greek and Latin 28 

Reasons why Greek and Latin exclusively were taught 

at Grammar Schools , 30 

Importance of these languages overrated 36 



LECTURE IL 

Language necessary as the means of acquiring* knowl- 



..45 

But knowledge of objects and their relations indispen- 

in useful education 48 



8 CONTENTS. 

Prussian system of education 52 

Education in German boarding-schools 54 

Dr. Drummond's defence of utility of scientific educa- 
tion to the industrious classes , 59 

Plan of education for these classes 66 

Abridgment of hours of labor necessary 68 

Legitimate effects of machinery ought to be to give lei- 
sure to the people 70 

The human race in the dawn of its existence: impor- 
tant discoveries are of very recent date .74 

Objection that the people are incapable of improve- 
ment answered 79 

Interference of the Legislature in regulating the habits 
of the people 81 



LECTURE IlL 

Education of the Female sex 84 

Influence of Mothers on the character of their children 

great 92 

Evils attendant on imperfect Female education 95 

Mrs. John Sanford's observations. 97 

Mrs. Willard's remarks 97 

Notice of the Association for procuring Instruction in 

Useful and Entertaining Science 100 

Objections to it ansvvered 103 

Its remarkable success 120 



APPENDIX. 

Summary of proceedings of the Association I'i2 



LECTURE 1. 

A FEW years ago, no question was more frequent- 
ly asked than, What is the use of Education ? and 
to none was it more difficult to give a satisfactory 
answer ; not because education is of no use, but be- 
cause the very term was apprehended in such a va- 
riety of senses by different individuals, that it was 
impossible to show that education was calculated to 
attain the precise advantage which each aspired to, 
when pursuing his own notions of utility. Besides, 
education is calculated to correct so many errors in 
practice, and to supply so many deficiences in hu- 
man institutions, that volumes would be required to 
render its real importance thoroughly conspicuous. 
Owing to the want of a philosophy of mind, educa- 
tion has hitherto been conducted empirically ; and, in- 
stead of obtaining from it a correct view of the nature 
of man, and of the objects and duties of life, each in- 
dividual has been left to form, upon these points, 
theories for himself, derived from the impressions 
made upon his own mind by the particular circum- 
stances in which he has been placed. No reasona- 
ble person takes up the philosophy of Astronomy, 
or of Chemistry, or of Physiology, at his own hand, 
2 



8 LECTURE I. 

without study, and without seeking for ascertained 
principles ; yet, in the philosophy of Mind, the prac- 
tice is quite different. Every professor, schoolmas- 
ter, author, editor, and pamphleteer, — every mem- 
ber of parliament, counsellor, and judge, — has a 
set of notions of his own, which, in his mind, hold 
the place of a system of the philosophy of man ; 
and, although he may not have methodized his 
ideas, or even acknowledged them to himself as a 
theory, yet they constitute a standard to him, by 
which he practically judges of all questions in mor- 
als, politics, and religion. He advocates whatever 
views coincide with ihem, and condemns all that dif- 
fer from them, with as little hesitation as a profess- 
ed theorist himself, and without the least thought of 
trying his own principles by any standard whatever. 
In short, in the great mass of the people, the mind, 
in judging of questions relating to morals, politics, 
and social institutions, acts as if it were purely in- 
stinctive, and exhibits all the confliction and uncer- 
tainty of mere feeling, unguided either by principles 
of reason or by facts ascertained by experience. 
Hence, public measures in general, whether relating 
to education, religion, trade, manufactures, the poor, 
criminal law, or any other of the dearest interests of 
society, instead of being treated as branches of one 
general system of economy, and adjusted on scien- 
tific principles, each in harmony with the others, are 
too often supported or opposed on narrow and em- 
pirical grounds, and occasionally call forth displays 
of ignorance, prejudice, and intolerance, at once dis- 



LECTURE I. 9 

graceful to the age, and calculated greatly to obstruct 
the progress of substantial improvement. Indeed, 
unanimity on questions of which the first principles 
must be found in the constitution of human nature, 
will be impossible, even among sensible and virtuous 
men, so long as no standard of mental philosophy is 
admitted to guide individual feelings and perceptions. 
Hence, when a young man, educated as a merchant, 
asks the use of anything, the only answer which will 
thoroughly interest him, will be one showing how 
much money may be made by it. The devoutly 
religious professor will acknowledge that alone to be 
useful, which tepds directly to salvation ; while the 
votary of fashion will admit the utility of such pur- 
suits only as are recognized by the refined but frivo- 
lous and generally ill-informed circle, which to him 
constitutes the highest tribunal of wisdom. To ex- 
pound to such persons principles affecting the gen- 
eral interests of society, and to talk to them of 
schemes for promoting the happiness of human be- 
ings in their various every-day conditions of hus- 
bands and wives, parents and children, masters and 
servants, teachers and pupils, and governors and 
subjects, appears like indulging a warm imagination 
in fanciful speculation. They think that the expe- 
rience of siK thousand years is sufficient to show, 
that man is not destined in this life to be greatly dif- 
ferent from what he has always been and now is; 
and that any measures pretending greatly to improve 
his condition, however desirable, are not at all to be 
believed in by sensible and practical people. This 



10 LECTURE I. 

State of things could not exist if education embraced 
a true system of human nature, and an exposition of 
its relations to the external world. 

To enable us to form a just estimate of our posi- 
tion as intelligent and accountable beings, introduced 
into a world prepared for our reception, and adapted 
to our nature by Divine power, wisdom, and good- 
ness, let us briefly investigate, 1st, The general as- 
pect of external nature ; and, 2d, Our own consti- 
tution. 

The first fact that presents itself to our notice in 
this inquiry is, that the constitution of this world does 
not look like a system of optimism, but appears to be 
arranged in all its departments on the principle of 
gradual and progressive improvement. Physical na- 
ture itself has undergone many revolutions, and ap- 
parently has constantly advanced. Geology seems 
to show a distinct preparation of it for successive 
orders of living beings, rising higher and higher in 
the scale of intelligence and organization, until man 
appeared. 

* The globe, in the first state in which the imagina- 
tion can venture to consider it,' says Sir H. Davy,* 
' appears to have been a fluid mass, with an immense 

* The description in the text is extracted chiefly from ' The 
Last Days of a Philosopher,' by Sir Humphrey Daw, 1831, 
p. 134, on account of its popular style ; but similar representa- 
tions may be found in all recent works on Geology, — particu- 
larly ' A Geological Manual, by H. T. De La Beche ; ' and 
Lyell's Principles of Geology ; — and in the Penny Maga- 
zine of 1833, in a very instructive popular form. 



LECTURE I. 11 

atmosphere revolving in space round the sun. By- 
its cooling, a portion of its atmosphere was probably- 
condensed into water, which occupied a part of its 
surface. In this state no forms of life, such as now 
belong to our system, could have inhabited it. The 
crystalline rocks, or, as they are called by geologists, 
the primary rocks, which contain no vestiges of a 
former order of tilings, were the results of the first 
consolidation on its surface. Upon the farther cool- 
ing, the water, which, more or less, had covered it, 
contracted ; depositions took place ; shell-fish and 
coral insects were created, and began their labors. 
Islands appeared in the midst of the ocean, raised 
fi'om the deep by the productive energies of millions 
of zoophytes. These islands became covered with 
vegetables fitted to bear a high temperature, such as 
palms, and various species of plants, similar to those 
which now exist in the hottest parts of the world. 
The submarine rocks of these new formations of 
land became covered with aquatic vegetables, on 
which various species of shell-fish, and common fish- 
es, found their nourishment. As the temperature of 
the globe became lower, species of the ov^iparous 
reptiles appear to have been created to inhabit it ; 
and the turtle, crocodile, and various gigantic animals 
of the Sauri (lizard) kind seem to have haunted the 
bays and waters of the primitive lands. But in this 
state of things, there appears to have been no order 
of events similar to the present. Immense volcan- 
ic explosions seem to have taken place, accompanied 
by elevations and depressions of the surface of the 
3* 



12 LECTURE T, 

globe, producing mountains, and causing new and 
extensive depositions from their primitive ocean. 
The remains of living beings, plants, fishes, birds, 
and oviparous reptiles, are found in the strata of 
rocks which are the monuments and evidence of 
these changes. When these revolutions became less 
frequent, and the globe became still more cooled, 
and inequalities of temperature were established by 
means of the mountain-chains, more perfect animals 
became its inhabitants, such as the mammoth, mega- 
lonix, megatherium, and gigantic hyena, many of 
which have become extinct. Five successive races 
of plants, and four successive races of animals, ap- 
pear to have been created and swept away by the 
physical revolutions of the globe, before the system 
of things became so permanent as to fit the world for 
man. In none of these formations, whether called 
secondary, tertiary, or diluvial, have the fossil re- 
mains of man, or any of his works, been discovered. 
At last, man was created ; and since that period 
there has been little alteration in the physical cir- 
cumstances of the globe.* 

* In all these various formations,* says Dr. Buck- 
land, ' the coprolites ' (or the dung of the saurian 
reptiles in a fossil state) ' form records of warfare 
waged by successive generations of inhabitants of 
our planet on one another ; and the general law of 
nature, which bids all to eat and be eaten in their 
turn, is shown to have been co-extensive with animal 
existence upon our globe; the carnivoram each pe- 
riod of the world^s history fulfilling their destined 



LECTURE I. 13 

ofEce to check excess in the progress of life, and 
maintain the balance of creation.' 

This brief summary of the physical changes of the 
Globe, is not irrelevant to our present object. The 
more that is discovered of creation, the more con- 
spicuously does uniformity of design appear to per- 
vade its every department. We perceive here the 
physical world gradually improved and prepared for 
man. 

Let us now contemplate Man himself, and his 
adaptation to the external creation. The world, we 
have seen, was inhabited by living beings, and death 
and reproduction prevailed before man appeared. 
The order of creation seems not to have been chang- 
ed at his introduction : — he appears to have been 
adapted to it. He received from his Creator an or- 
ganized structure, and animal instincts. He took 
his station among, yet at the head of, the beings 
that existed at his creation. Man is to a certain ex- 
tent an animal in his structure, powers, feelings, and 
desires, and is adapted to a world in which death 
reigns, and generation succeeds generation. This 
fact, although so trite and obvious as to appear 
scarcely worthy of being noticed, is of importance in 
treating of education ; because the human being, in so 
far as he resembles the inferior creatures, is capable 
of enjoying a life like theirs : he has pleasure in eat- 
ing, drinking, sleeping, and exercising his limbs; and 
one of the greatest obstacles to improvement is, that 
many of the race are contented with these enjoy- 
ments, and consider it painful to be compelled to seek 
higher sources of gratification. But to man's animal 



14 LECTURE I. 

nature have been added, by a bountiful Creator, 
moral sentiments and reflecting faculties, which not 
only place him above all other creatures on earth, 
but constitute him a different being from any of them, 
a rational and accountable creature. These facul- 
ties are his highest and best gifts, and the sources of 
his purest and intensest pleasures. They lead him 
directly to the great objects of his existence, — obe- 
dience to God, and love to his fellow-men. But 
this peculiarity attends them, that while his animal 
faculties act powerfully of themselves, his rational 
faculties require to be cultivated, exercised, and in- 
structed, before i hey will yield their full harvest of 
enjoyment. In regard to them, education becomes 
of paramount importance. 

The Creator has so arranged the external world 
as to hold forth every possible inducement to man 
to cultivate his higher powers, nay, almost to con- 
strain him-to do so. The philosophic mind, in sur- 
veying the world as prepared for the reception of 
the human race, perceives in external nature a vast 
assemblage of stupendous powers, too great for the 
feeble hand of man entirely to control, but kindly 
subjected within certain limits to the influence of his 
will. Man is introduced on earth apparently help- 
less and unprovided for, as a homeless stranger ; but 
the soil on which he treads is endowed with a thou- 
sand capabilities of production, which require only 
to be excited by his intelligence to yield him the 
most ample returns. The impetuous torrent rolls 
its waters to the main ; but, as it dashes over the 



LECTURE I. J^ 



mountain-clifF, the human hand is capable of with- 
drawing it from its course, and bending its powers 
subservient to his will. Ocean extends over half 
the globe her liquid plain, in which no path appears ; 
and the rude winds oft lift her waters to the sky : 
but, there the skill of man may launch the strong 
knit bark, spread forth the canvass to the gale, and 
make the trackless deep a hiu^hway through the 
world. In such a st. te of things, knowledge is t uly 
power; and it is obviously the interest of human be- 
ings to become acquainted with the constitution and 
relations of every object around them, that they may 
discover hs capabilities of ministering to their own 
advantage. Farther, — where these physical energies 
are too great to be controlled, man has received m- 
telligence, by which he may observe their course, 
and accommodate his conduct to their influence. 
This capacity of adaptation is a valuable substitute 
.for the power of regulating them by his will. Man 
cannot arrest the sun in its course, so as to avert the 
wintry storms and cause perpetual spring to bloom 
around him ; but, by the proper exercise of his in- 
telligence and corporeal energies, he is able to fore- 
see the approach of bleak skies and rude winds, and 
to 1 lace himself in safety from their injurious effects. 
These powers of controlling nature, and of accommo- 
dating his conduct to its course, are the direct results 
of his rational faculties ; and in proportion to their 
cultivation is his sway extended. If the rain fall 
and the wind blow, and the ocean billows lash against 
the mere animal, it must endure them all ; because it 
cannot control their action, nor protect itself by art 



16 LECTURE I. 

from their power. Man, while ignorant, continues 
in a condition almost equally helpless. But let him 
put forth his proper human capacities, and he then 
finds himself invested with the power to rear, to build, 
to fabricate, and to store up provisions ; and, by avail- 
ing himself of these resources, and accommodating 
hisconduct to the course of nature's laws, he is able 
to smile in safety beside the cheerful hearth, when 
the elements maintain their fiercest war abroad. 

Again : We are surrounded by countless beings, 
inferior and equal to ourselves, whose qualities yield 
us the greatest happiness, or bring upon us the bit- 
terest evil, according as we afl^eet them agreeably or 
disagreeably by our conduct. To draw forth all 
their excellencies, and cause them to diffuse joy 
around us — to avoid touching the harsher springs 
of their constitution, and bringing painful discord to 
our ears — it is indispensably necessary that we 
know the nature of our fellows, and act with an ha- 
bitual regard to the relations establishsd by the Cre- 
ator betwixt ourselves and them. 

Man, ignorant and uncivilized, is a ferocious, 
sensual, and superstitious savage. The external 
world affords some enjoyments to his animal feelings, 
but it confounds his moral and intellectual faculties. 
External nature exhibits to his mind a mighty chaos 
of events, and a dread display of power. The chain 
of causation appears too intricate to be unravelled, 
and the power too stupendous to be controlled. Or- 
der and beauty, indeed, occasionally gleam forth to 
his eye, from detached portions of creation, and 



LECTURE I. 



17 



seem to promise happiness and joy ; but, more fre- 
quently, clouds and darkness brood over the scene, 
and disappointhis fondest expectations. Evil seems 
so mixed up with good, that he regards it either as 
its direct product or its inseparable accompaniment. 
Nature is never contemplated with a clear percep- 
tion of its adaptation to the purpose of promoting the 
true enjoyment of m.an, or with a well-founded con- 
fidence in the wisdom and benevolence of its Author. 
Man, when civilized and illuminated by knowledge, 
on the other hand, discovers in the objects and oc- 
currences around him a scheme beautifully arranged 
for the gratification of his whole powers, animal, 
moral, and intellectual : he recognizes in himself the 
intelligent and accountable subject of an all-bounti- 
ful Creator, and in joy and gladness desires to study 
the Creator's works, to ascertain his laws, and to 
yield to them a steady and a willing obedience. 
Without undervaluing the pleasures of his animal 
nature, he tastes the higher, more refined, and more 
enduring delights of his n)oral and intellectual ca- 
pacities, and he then calls aloud for education as 
indispensable to the full enjoyment of his rational 
powers. 

If this representation of the condition of the hu- 
man being on earth be correct, we perceive clearly 
the unspeakable advantage of applying our minds to 
gain knowledge, and of resulating our conduct ac- 
cording to rules drawn from the information acquired. 
Our constitution and our position equally imply, that 
the grand object of our existence is, not to remain con- 
tented with the pleasure of mere animal life, but to 



18 LECTURE I. 

take the dignified and far more delightful station of 
moral and rational occupants of this lower world. 
Education, then, means the process of acquiring that 
knowledge of ourselves and of external nature, and 
the formation of those habits of enterprize and activ- 
ity, which are indispensable to the performance of 
our parts, with intelligence and success, in such a 
scene. 

These views may appear to many persons to be 
so clearly founded in reason, as to require neither 
proof nor illustration ; yet there are, others who are 
little familiar with such contemplations, to whom a 
few elucidations may be useful. As the latter are 
precisely those whom we desire to benefit, I solicit 
your permission to enter into a (ew details, even at 
the risk of appearing tedious to the more enlighten- 
ed among my hearers. 

To understand correctly the constitution of the 
human mind, and its need of instruction, it is useful 
to compare it with that of the inferior animals. The 
lower creatures are destined to act from instinct ; 
and instinct is a tendency to act in a certain way, 
planted in the animal directly by the Creator, with- 
out its knowing the ultimate design, or the nature of 
the means by wliich its aim is to be accomplished. 
A bee, for example, constructs its cell In conformi- 
ty with the most rigid principles of physical science, 
according to whicli it is necessary that the fabric 
should possess a particular form, and be joined to 
other cells at a particular angle, in preference to all 
others. The creature has no knowledge of these 



LECTURE I. 19 

principles ; but acts in accordance with them, by an 
impulse obviously planted in it by the author of its 
being. Man is not directed by unerring impulses 
like this. Before he could construct a fabric with 
similar success, he would require to become acquaint- 
ed, by experiment and observation, with the nature 
of the materials which he intended to use ; and to 
form a clear conception of the whole design, pre- 
viously to the commencement of his labor. A mo- 
ther, among the inferior animals, is impelled by pure 
instinct to administer to her offspring that kind of 
protection, food and training, which its nature and 
circumstances require ; and so admirably does she 
fulfil this duty even at the first call, that human sa- 
gacity could not improve, or rather could not at all 
equal, her treatment. Now these animals proceed 
without consciousness of the admirable wisdom dis- 
played in their actions, because they do not act from 
knowledge and design. It is certain that wherever 
design appears, there must be intelligence ; but the 
wisdom resides not in the animals, but in their au- 
thor. The Creator, therefore, in constituting the 
bee, or the beaver, possessed perfect knowledge of 
the external circumstances in which he was about to' 
place it, and of its relations, when so placed, to all 
other creatures and objects ; and conferred on it 
powers or instincts of action, admirably adapted to 
secure its preservation and enjoyment. Hence, 
when enlightened men contemplate the powers and 
habits of animals, and compare them with their con- 
3 



20 LECTURE I. 

dition, they perceive wisdom and benevolence con- 
spicuously displayed by the Creator. 

One consequence of this constitution, however, is, 
that there is no progression among the lower crea- 
tures, considered as a race. Their endowments and 
condition having been appointed directly by divine 
wisdom, improvement is impossible, without a change 
either of their nature or of the -external world. 
They are placed at once at the highest point to 
which their constitution permits them to ascend ; and 
the possibility of their attempting to emerge out of 
their condition is effectually cut off, by their being 
denied the means not only of recording, but even of 
acquiring, any knowledge of design and relations, 
beyond the sphere of their own instincts. The fact 
that individuals of the domestic animals improve un- 
der human tuition, is not in real opposition to this 
principle ; because the nature of the horse, the dog, 
and other creatures destined to live with man, is con- 
stituted with reference to human influence. Their 
powders are constituted, so as to admit of his improv- 
ing individuals among them ; but they do not ad- 
vance as a race. 

Man has also received instincts which resemble 
those of the lower animals, such as the love of sex, 
of offspring, of society, and of praise, the instinct of 
resentment, and many others ; by the exercise of 
which, as 1 have said, he may maintain his purely 
animal existence, with very little aid from education. 
But he is distinguished by the addition of two orders 
of faculties, which the inferior creatures want: 1st, 



LECTURE I. 21 

Moral sentiments — such as the love of justice, of 
piety, of universal happiness, of perfection ; and, 
2dly, Reflecting faculties fitted to acquire knowledge 
of the properties of external objects, of their modes 
of action, and of their effects. 

These two classes of faculties render man a very 
different being from the inferior creatures. The 
function of reason being to acquire knowledge of ob- 
jects and their effects, Man is not carried to the most 
beneficial mode of promoting his own happiness in 
the direct and unreflecting manner in which the in- 
ferior creatures are led to that end. The human fe- 
male, for example, devoid of all instruction and ex- 
perience, will feel as lively a joy at the birth of a 
child and as warm an attachment towards it. and will 
as ardently desire its welfare, as the most devoted 
among the inferior creatures ; because she possesses 
the same instinctive love of offspring which distin- 
guishes them. But in that condition of ignorance, 
she will not administer towards it the same perfect 
treatment, with reference to its wants, as the mother 
in the lower scale ; and for this reason, that, in the 
animal, the instinct is directed to its proper mode of 
gratification by the Author of Nature : He prompts 
her to do exactly what His wisdom knows to be ne- 
cessary ; whereas, in the human being, the instinct 
is left to the guidance of reason. Woman is com- 
manded to exert her intellect in studying the consti- 
tution, bodily and mental, of herself and her off- 
spring, in order that she may rear it with success in 
all stages of its existence, while it requires her as- 



22 LECTURE I. 

sistance ; and if she shall neglect to perform this du- 
ty, she and her children will suffer a severe penalty, 
in being exposed to all the consequences of erro- 
neous treatment. 

Every day affords examples of the truth of this 
remark. Two young ladies, when in infancy, lost 
both parents ; but sufficient property was left to 
give them what is called a good education. They 
were reared in a fashionable boarding-school, and in 
due time the elder was respectably married. When 
her first child was born, she was extremely perplex- 
ed. Never having lived where there were infants in 
the family, she had had no opportunity of learning 
hy experience how to rear such tender plants ; and 
never having been taught anything of the structure, 
or functions, or wants, of the human being, she pos- 
sessed no principles by which she could direct the 
treatment of her child. In her anxiety to do it jus- 
lice, she asked the advice of every female visitor, 
and was speedily bewildered amidst the incongruous 
recommendations which she received. Unable to 
decide for herself, she adopted now one plan and then 
another, till in a few weeks the unhappy infant died. 
This is an extreme case ; but an intelligent female 
friend, who communicated it to me, had no doubt 
that the child perished through lack of knowledge. 

Many persons are not aware that human instincts 
are more blind than those of the lower animals, and 
that they lead to worse results when not directed by 
reason. They imagine that if they possess a feeling 
strongly, -such as the love of offspring, or the love of 



LECTURE 1. 23 

God, they cannol err in the mode of gratifying it ; 
they act with all the energy of impulse, and all the 
blindness of infatuation. A mighty change will be 
effected in human conduct, when the mass of man- 
kind become acquainted with the indispensable ne- 
cessity of reason to the proper direction of their feel- 
ings, and with the fact that knowledge is the grand 
element, without which reason cannot be efficiently 
exerted. Man, therefore, being a progressive and 
improvable being, has been furnished with reason, 
and been left to discover, by the exercise of it, his 
own nature, the nature of external objects, and their 
effects, and to adapt the one to the other for his own 
advantage ; and when he shall do so, he will assume 
his proper station as a rational being. The only 
limit to this proposition is, that each of his faculties, 
bodily and mental, and every external object, have 
received a definite constitution, and are regulated 
by precise laws, so that limits have been set to human 
aberration, and also to human attainments : but, 
within these limits, vast materials for producing hap- 
piness, by harmonious and wise adaptations, or mis- 
ery, by discordant and foolish combinations, exist ; 
and these must be discovered and employed by man, 
before he can reach the full enjoyment of which his 
nature is susceptible. 

I do not pretend to predicate to what degree of 
perfection man is capable of being carried by these 
means. Looking at the condition of the inferior an- 
imals, I should not expect optimism ; because dis- 
ease, death, cold, heat, and famine, are incident to 
3* 



24 IrECTURE I. 

them all : bnt, on dispassionately comparing the en- 
joyments of the inferior creatures, in relation to their 
natures, with the past and present enjoyments of the 
human race, in relation to their superior capacities, 
I fear that man does not surpass them to the extent 
which he ought to do, if he made a proper use of 
the means fairly in his power of promoting his own 
happiness. Comparing the civilized Christian in- 
habitants of modern Europe, with the ignorant, fe- 
rocious, filthy, and helpless savages of New South 
Wales, we perceive a vast advance : but I do not be- 
lieve that the limits of attainable perfection have yet 
been reached even by the best of Europe's sons. 
All, therefore, that I venture to hope for is, that man, 
by the proper employment of the means presented 
to him, may arrive at last at a condition of enjoy- 
ment of his mortal existence, as great, in relation to 
his rational nature, as that of the lower animals is in 
relation to their natures. This is no more than say- 
ing, that the Creator has made man as perfect as a 
reasonable being, as He has made the lower animals 
perfect as instinctive creatures. 

I trust, then, that most of you will now concur 
with me in thinking, that if man, by his constitution, 
be an intelligent and improveable being, he must be 
taught knowledge, and trained to apply it, as the first 
stage in his progress towards enjoyment. In other 
words, he must be educated. 

Let us inquire, then, into the present condition of 
education, and afterwards consider how it may be 
improved. 



LECTURE I. 25 

Suppose a young man to receive what is by many 
held to be a sufficiently good education — to have 
been taught reading, writing, arithmetic, Latin, and 
a smattering of Greek — and to be then sent into the 
world, — What will be the amount of his attain- 
ments ? The acquirements just mentioned appear 
considerable, and I am far from undervaluing them. 
They are the instruments, by the diligent use of 
which much useful ^nd practical knoivledge may be 
attained ; but in themselves they do not constitute 
such knowledge. A few observations are necessary 
to elucidate this proposition. 

First, In regard to language in general, and what 
are termed ' the learned languages ' in particular, I 
remark, that we may have an extensive knowledge 
of things, and few words by which to express, it. 
Thus, a self-taught artizan often advances far into 
the principles and practice of his art before he has 
read books and become acquainted with terms to 
designate the objects and operations with which he 
is familiar. He has more ideas than words ; and 
this is a great evil, for he cannot communicate his 
knowledge, or receive instruction from others by 
books. Other individuals, however, have more words 
than ideas ; which also is very inconvenient ; for 
they have the means of communicating knowledge, 
but lack knowledge to communicate : they are great 
scholars, but can teach mankind no practical art or 
science. 

Words are mere arbitrary signs for expressing 
feelings and ideas in the mind ; and the best condi- 



26 



LECTURE I. 



tion of an individual is to possess ample ideas, and 
an equally extensive stock of words. It is bet- 
ter, however, to have ten ideas, and only ten words 
to express them, although all the words should be- 
long to one language, than to have only one idea, and 
ten words in as many different languages for com- 
municating it. For example, a monk, who has only 
seen a horse passing by the window of his cell, may 
know that this animal is named in Greek, UTtJtog (hip- 
pos ;) in Latin equus ; in English, a horse ; in 
French, cheval ; in Italian, cavallo ; in German, 
pferd ; and by some persons, he may be supposed to 
be, in consequence, highly learned. He is indeed 
considerably learned, but unfortunately not on the 
subject of the horse itself, but only on the names by 
which it is designated in different countries. His 
stock of REAL knowledge would be only that which 
he had picked up by looking at the creature through 
the window, and would not be in the slightest de- 
gree increased by the acquirement of these six words 
to express the name of the animal. His original 
NOTION of a horse, whatever it was, v^ould continue 
unextended and unimproved by all these additions 
to its names. The person of a man is neither 
stronger, taller, nor more graceful, because he pos- 
sesses six suits of clothes, than it would be if he had 
only one ; and so it is with the mind. A youth 
trained in a stable-yard, whose attention had been 
directed to the various qualities necessary to con- 
stitute a good hackney, hunter, or race-horse, and 
who knew its name only in his mother-tongue, would 



LECTURE I. 27 

be far superior, as a practical judge of horses, to the 
monk. He would excel him in selecting, employ- 
ing, managing, and rearing horses. He would pos- 
sess ideas about the animal itself — would know 
what points were good and what bad about it ; how 
it would work in different situations ; how it would 
thrive on particular kinds of food ; and in what man- 
ner it ought habitually to be treated, so as to obtain 
the most complete development of its natural powers. 
This is practical knowledge : acquaintance with 
words is learning. Hitherto education has been con- 
ducted too much on the principle of looking at the 
world only out of the window of the school and the 
college, and teaching the names of the beings and 
things therein contained, in a variety of languages, 
to the neglect of the study of the beings and things 
themselves; whereas man, as a creature destined 
for action, fitted to control nature to some extent, 
and, beyond this, left to accommodate his conduct 
to its course, requires positive knowledge of creation, 
its elements and laws, and has little use for words 
which go beyond the stock of his ideas. 

Language, however, is not to be depreciated or 
despised. Man is obviously formed to live in socie- 
ty : his happiness is vastly increased by co-opera- 
tion and interchange of ideas with his fellows ; and 
language, oral and written, is his natural medium of 
communication. It is of first-rate importance to 
every individual, therefore, to possess not only words 
for all his ideas and emotions, but such expertness 
in using them in speech and writing, as may enable 



28 LECTURE I. 

him readily and successfully to convey to other minds 
the precise impressions existing in his own. Keep- 
ing in view, therefore, that notions of things are of 
first-rate utility, and that language is of value only 
as a means of communicating what we know and 
feel, we may proceed to inquire into the value of 
Greek and Latin as elements of education. The 
history of their introduction into schools, and of the 
circumstance which led to their past high estimation, 
merits our attention. 

The Greeks and Romans were the earliest nations 
in Europe who attained to civilization ; in other 
words, they were the first who so far cultivated 
their mental faculties as to acquire numerous and 
tolerable precise ideas of government, laws, morals, 
intellectual philosophy, and the fine arts. In con- 
sequence of their minds possessing these ideas, 
their languages contained terms to express them. 
In the fourth and fifth centuries, the Roman em- 
pire was overrun by ignorant barbarians from the 
north of Europe, whose mental powers, from not 
having been cultivated, had not reached the concep- 
tions now alluded to, and whose languages, in con- 
sequence, were as barren as their thoughts. A long 
night of darkness prevailed in Europe, until at length 
civilization again dawned where it had last set — in 
Italy. The cities of that country, situated under a 
genial climate, and surrounded by a fertile soil, had, 
as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, made 
considerable progress in arts and manufactures : 
wealth flowed in upon them ; this produced leisure 



LECTURE I. 29 

and a desire for refined enjoyment, whence a taste 
for literature gradually aro&e. 

The manuscripts of Greece and Rome had long 
slumbered in the cells of monastic institutions, and 
many of them had been erased to give place to 
monkish legends ; but now they were ardently dis- 
interred. When recovered and understood, they 
were found to contain more sublime and elegant 
poetry, — more refined yet nervous eloquence, — 
more brilliant, pointed, and ingenious, wit, — with 
profounder and juster views on law, criticism, and 
philosophy, — than had been known or heard of 
since the subversion of civilization ; and all these 
treasures, too, embodied in languages so rich, dis- 
criminative, and refined, that Europe, in addition to 
this accession of knowledge, was at once furnished 
with exquisite vehicles of thought, without the la- 
bor of invention. 

In these circumstances, Greek and Latin natural- 
ly became objects of intense study among all men 
who aspired to superior intelligence. There was 
great good sense in this direction of their mental en- 
ergies ; because, at that time, and in their situation, 
these languages really unlocked to them the richest 
intellectual stores then existing in the world, and 
put them in possession also of an instrument for com- 
municating their thoughts, greatly surpassing, in del- 
icacy and power, any they could have obtained by 
their own invention, or found in the literature of their 
native countries. 



30 LECTURE I. 

In this manner, and for these reasons, colleges, 
schools, bursaries, and other institutions, were es- 
tablished, for teaching and cultivating the Greek 
and Latin languages, and they obtained the appella- 
tion of ' humane literature,' Literje Humaniores : 
eminence in them became the passport to fame; 
and a person deeply conversant with them was dig- 
nified with the title of ' a Learned Man.' 

In the course of time, however, the nations of 
Europe, aided by the invention of printing, and, lat- 
terly, by stupendous discoveries in science and the 
arts, and the wide diffusion of Christianity among 
the people, far outstripped the Greeks and Romans 
in their most useful attainments. The Italians, 
French, English, and Germans, made gigantic strides 
in developing their mental powers ; and their lan- 
guages, by a law of the human constitution, kept 
pace with the multiplication of their emotions and 
ideas. England could long ago boast of a Bacon, 
a Shakspeare, a Milton, a Newton, and a Locke ; 
and she is now able to exhibit an additional list of 
names, so splendid and extensive as almost to defy 
repetition, of men who have embodied in her lan- 
guage thoughts and inventions so profound, admira- 
ble, and useful, that the philosophy, the science, 
and the arts, of the ancient world sink into compar- 
ative insignificance before them. 

This change of circumstances has clearly altered 
the relative value and importance of Greek and Lat- 
in. There is now no knowledge relating to the phy- 
sical and moral worlds contained in these languages, 



LECTURE 1. 



31 



which does not exist clearly expressed in English ; 
and there is no mode of feeling or of thought sub- 
servient to the practical purposes of hfe, that may 
not be as forcibly and elegantly clothed in our native 
language as in them. Human institutions and prac- 
tices, however, often long survive the causes that 
gave them birth ; and from five to seven precious 
years of our lives in youth are still dedicated to the 
study of the learned languages, as if all their origi- 
nal importance remained. 

At the time when public schools, such as the High 
School of Edinburgh and the grammar schools of 
the difFerent burghs of Scotland, were instituted, 
there was no science that could benefit the people. 
These seminaries, therefore, as schools of preparato- 
ry instruction, were nearly co-extensive with the uni- 
versities. In these primary schools, the pupils were 
tanght the elements of Greek and Latin ; and in the 
colleges the same studies were carried forward to 
the highest point which the time and capacity of the 
scholar could reach. In the progress of years, how- 
ever, arts and sciences have been discovered. In 
Scotland, the Universities have to a great extent kept 
pace with the growing knowledge of ihe age. In 
Edinburgh College, lectures are now delivered on 
almost all the physical sciences, and on every branch 
of medicine. In short, the knowledge of Nature in 
all her departments is taught ; Greek and Latin con- 
stituting only departments of the general system of 
tuition. If our primary schools had kept pace with 
this improvement, all would have been well. If we 
4 



32 LECTURE I. 

had followed the spirit of practical wisdom manifest- 
ed by our ancestors, and extended our elementary 
instruction in proportion to the enlargement of our 
university education, the knowledge of the people 
would have been far superior to what it actually is. 
But, by a strange anomaly, our primary schools have, 
till within these few years, been allowed to stand 
still, while the universities have advanced. These 
schools have continued to teach little else than En- 
glish, Greek, and Latin, and the consequences have 
been most baneful. The great mass of the people 
of the middle and lower ranks, having been taught 
exclusively at these and the parish schools, have been 
led to believe languages to be practical knowledge ; 
and they have been defrauded of the opportunity of 
acquiring elementary instruction in the arts, sciences, 
and other departments of useful knowledge. They 
have wasted in studying — or in attempting to study 
— Greek and Latin, the only time which their busy 
lives left at their command for obtaining information. 
They have been sent into the world absolutely igno- 
rant of the existence of the vast field of moral and 
intellectual instruction presented by the works of the 
Creator. The higher orders, again, who have ad- 
vanced to the university classes, have found them- 
selves obliged to commence with the very rudiments 
of the sciences, after having spent from five to seven 
years in what they were led to believe were pre- 
paratory studies. In the great public hospitals, the 
system of teaching languages produces its fruits in a 
very tangible form. While children living in their 



LECTURE I. 



33 



parents' houses in a town learn something of real 
life by intercourse with society, perusing newspapers, 
and observing passing occurrences, the ignorance of 
the children shut up within the walls of an institution, 
and excluded from these sources of information, will, 
at the end of their imprisonment, present a just pic- 
ture of the eftects of the system to which they have 
been subjected. I have been informed, accordingly, 
by men engaged in practical business who have re- 
ceived apprentices from public hospitals, that the lads 
appear, on their entrance into active life, as if they 
had just dropped from the moon. Everything is 
strange to them ; and very little of what had been 
previously taught to them presents itself in their 
new condition in a practical form. What 1 contend 
for is, that common sense should be employed to di- 
rect the studies in the primary schools as well as in 
the universities, and that, in addition to languages, 
the elements of useful knowledge should be there 
taught.* 

* Since the Lectures were written, a great improvement has 
been introduced into the Regulations of George Heriot's 
Hospital in Edinburgh. On 1st November, 1833, it was enacted 
by the Governors, that the branches of education for the senior 
boys ' shall be such as may be interesting to all these boys, 
whatever may be their destination in after life ; ' and among 
the branches enumerated are, 'the first principles of Natural 
History and Mechanical Philosophy.' 

I have received the following letter since the publication of 

these Lectures. ^ „„ 

' Heriot's Hospital, 26th Dec. 1833. 

* To George Com?e, Esq, 

<SiR, — In your Lectures on Education lately published, it 
seems to be assumed, that it has not hitherto been usual to 



34 LECTURE I. 

In surveying, then, the prevalent system of con- 
fining education in primary schools chiefly to lan- 
guages, we observe that the following consequences 
ensue : First, The human faculties desire knowledge 
as their natural food, and it is only after a consider- 
able stock of ideas has been acquired, and many 
emotions experienced, that the value of words, as a 
means of expressing them, comes to be appreciated. 
By the common practice of teaching, however, little 
knowledge of things is communicated, and children 
are compelled to proceed at once to the study of 
difficult, copious, and obsolete languages, to have 
their memories burdened with words corresponding 
to which they have no ideas. This proceeding be- 
ing an outrage upon NaturCj — tedium, disgust, and 

communicate scientific knowledge to the boys belonging to this 
institution. 

' In justice to myself, I must take the liberty of informing 
you, that during several years, that I have been one of the 
teachers here, the older boys under my charge have been in the 
habit of studying a book, which contains chapters on such sub- 
jects as the following : — 

' General properties of bodies. Cohesive attraction. Capil- 
lary attraction. Gravitation. Laws of motion. Mechanical 
powers. The lever. The wheel and axle. The pulley. The 
inclined plane. The wedge. The screw. Mechanical prop- 
erties of fluids. Specific gravity. JMechanical properties of 
air. On the general effects of heat. Chemical attraction. 
Component parts of atmospheric air. Oxygen. Nitrogen. 
.Nitrous oxide gas. Component parts of water. Hydrogen. 
On the agency of water as connected with heat, &c. &c. &c. 

' I may also state, that 1 have been in the habit of occupying 
one of the play hours of the boys in exhibiting experimental 



LECTURE I. 35 

suffering, invade the youthful mind. As a means of 
conquering aversion, severe discipline used to be, 
and occasionally still is, resorted to, — which, being 
felt to be unjust, rouses the worst feelings and debas- 
es the sentiments, while the intellect is starved and 
impaired by dealing habitually with sounds to which 
no clear conceptions are attached. 

Secondly, Under this system, children make no 
substantial progress in any useful acquirement. Nine 
out of ten drawl away the months and years of their 
allotted penance, and, within a brief space after its 
close, forget every syllable which they have learned 
widi so much labor and pain ; and even the tenth, 
who, from a higher natural talent for languages, per- 
haps distinguished himself by his classical attain- 
ments, does not, on entering the counting-room or 

illustrations of everything in the above chapters, susceptible 
of being illustrated in that way. This can be attested by my 
friend Dr. Murray, who has shown a liberality which I can 
never too highly estimate, in supplying me with apparatus, and 
materials for conducting the experiments. The boys have al- 
ways felt so much interest not only in the exhibition, but in the 
explanation of the rationale of these experiments, that, although 
they deprived the boys of one of their play hours, my great 
difficulty has always been, not to use means to induce them to 
attend, but to keep back those who had no right to be present. 

' As you take so deep an interest in the subject of education, 
I would account it a favor, if you would make a visit to my 
school, any day except Saturday, between 1 and 2 o'clock, when 
I shall have an opportunity of showing you what we have been 
doing in this department. 

* I am, sir, your most humble and obedient servant, 

(Signed) ' John Bell.' 

4* 



36 LECTURE I. 

workshop, always find himself as superior to his com- 
petitors in the practical business of life as in schol- 
arship. 

If the study of the dead languages is not prosecut- 
ed in after life, the time devoted to them is positive^ 
ly misapplied. It is a fact quite notorious, that nine- 
tenths of the children educated in a commercial 
town do not follow professions for which Greek and 
Latin are indispensable ; and hence the time and 
money expended by at least this proportion of pupils 
are most unprofitably bestowed. Indeed there is a 
great delusion in tlie public mind in regard to the 
necessity of. Greek, even for the medical profession- 
Professor Chhistison, when examined some years 
ago before the Royal Commission which visited the 
University of Edinburgh, stated, that at the High 
School he had been dux of the Greek Class, and at 
the College had gained a prize for a knowledge of 
that language, and was naturally fond of it ; but that 
from the time when he began to study medicine, he 
found his attention so fully occupied by substantial 
science, that he had scarcely opened a Greek book ; 
while he had been obliged to study French and Ger- 
man for the sake of the medical information to which 
they were the means of obtaining access.* 

* I heard the statement in the text some years ago from a 
friend, and noted it at the time ; but, before publishing it, I 
wrote to Professor Christison, mentioning my desire to ascer- 
tain if it was correct, and he has kindly sent me the following 
letter : — 



LECTURE I. 



37 



It is erroneous to say that Greek and Latin are 
indispensably necessary to enable a boy to under- 
stand his own language. This must be the case 
only where no adequate pains are bestowed by teach- 
ers in conveying fully the meaning and value of En- 
glish expressions. All words are mere arbitrary 
sounds, and, in itself, a sound invented by an En- 
glishman is as capable of being rendered intelligible 
by proper definition, as one first suggested by a 
Greek or Roman. A great proportion of the words 
which compose the English language are derived 

' To George Combe, Esq. 23 Charlotte Square. 

'My dear Sir, — The evidence before the University 
Commissioners was never published, though printed; nor have 
I seen that part of my evidence to which you refer smce 
the time it was given. But, to the best of my recollection, I 
stated in regard to Greek — very much as you have put it in 
your letter — that, in my youth, I had cultivated it for about 
five years, and had made some proficiency in it, being fond of the 
language ; but that I had since found so little occasion to put it 
to practical use, although pursuing the various branches of my 
profession as objects of scientific study, that 1 did not believe I 
could at that moment translate a single passage of Greek which 
mioht be placed before me. Such is certainly still the state of 
maUers with me and my Greek ; and I had occasion very lately, 
in our discussions in the Senatus Academicus regarding the 
propriety of preliminary general education for Doctors of Med- 
icine, to renew my objections to Greek as one of them, in the 
terms now mentioned. I am almost certain that, in my evi- 
dence before the Commission, I also added, that if any other 
language but Latin were to be required, I should infinitely pre- 
fer placing French, and even German too, in our Statuta. 

« My opinion regarding Greek shortly is, that it is a most de- 
sirable branch of literature for imparting general knowledge 
and cultivation to the mind; but, for direct professional pur- 
poses, is of so little consequence, both in itself and likewise as 



38 LECTURE I. 

from the Saxon ; yet nobody thinks a knowledge of 
that language also to be necessary for the due under- 
standing of our native tongue. The grand requisites 
to the right use of speech are two, — clear notions 
or ideas, and accurate definitions of the words em- 
ployed to designate them. The former will be best 
attained by studying things and their relations, and 
the latter by a careful exposition of our mother- 
tongue, by a person who knows scientifically both 
the things signified and the genius of the language. 

compared with modern languages and the exact sciences, that, 
considering the great augmentation of the branches of proper 
medical study in these days, the pursuit of it, as a compulsory 
measure for medical students, is a mere waste of time and la- 
bor. Believe me year's very truly, R. Christison'. 
' JSTovember 23. 
' 3 Great Stuart Street.' 

* P. S. — I have no objection to your making any public use 
of my sentiments which you may desire ; for I am sure they 
coincide with those entertained by most qualified judges whom 
I have conversed with on the subject ; and I am most anxious 
at the present moment — when the matter of medical educa- 
tion is about to be taken up by the Government, — that un- 
professional men of common sense be not led away by the nat- 
ural partiality of classical scholars for their favorite pursuit, 
or by the recollection, that, in former times, when medicine 
and the medicinal sciences were in small compass, and the stu- 
dent had therefore ample time for collateral studies, Greek was 
naturally enough considered a necessary branch of knowledge, 
because it was one of the almost indispensable tests of a man 
of cultivated mind or a learned profession.' 

I consider the cause of rational education much benefited by 
the testimony of Professor Christison in the prefixed letter. 
It is highly characteristic of that bold, independent, and prac- 
tical understanding, which has raised him at an early age to a 
distinguished place in the University of his native city. 



LECTURE I. 39 

The derivation of words is not always an index to 
their true signification : artery means, literally, air 
vessel, yet it circulates blood ; physiology is derived 
from (fvgic, nature, and Aojoc, discourse ; yet in En- 
glish it is used to designate only the doctrine of ani- 
mal and vegetable functions. In teaching etymology, 
therefore, we must often guard the student against 
the errors into which it would lead him ; so that the 
difficulty of his understanding his native tongue, is 
to that extent increased by his studies in Greek and 
Latin. 

Various obvious reasons exist why so little of En- 
glish is understood by those who learn it and no 
other language or science at school. Owing to the 
deficiency of their own education, teacheis them- 
selves, in general, do not possess distinct knowledge 
of the things signifiied by the sounds which they 
communicate ; and, from not understanding ideas, 
they have it not in their power to define words ac- 
curately. Hence they cannot, and do not, bring 
together before the minds of the pupils, a clear con- 
ception of the things signified, and of the sign, with- 
out the combination of which the right use of speech 
is impracticable. Farther ; schoolmasters, in general, 
communicate only the sounds of words, and the ab- 
stract rules of grammar; but this is not leaching a 
language. Teaching a language implies unfolding 
its structure, idiom, and power — a task which re- 
quires much reflection and extensive information. 

A professor of English, therefore, would be more 
useful to nine out often of the pupils of any acade- 



40 LECTURE I. 

my for the education of the industrious classes, than 
professors of Greek and Latin ; and it is only after 
English has been taught in this or such other way 
as may be best adapted to the human understanding, 
and without success, that the conclusion ought to be 
drawn that it cannot be understood sufficiently for 
all useful and ornamental purposes, without a previ- 
ous knowledge of Greek and Latin. The extensive 
study of Greek and Latin by learned men, has led 
to the practice of compounding all new words out 
of Greek roots ; and as Chemistry, Geology and 
other branches of Natural History, are advancing with 
cheering rapidity, multitudes of purely Greek words 
are added to our language every year, and the un- 
initiated suffer great inconvenience from not under- 
standing thern. This evil, I believe, is to a great 
extent unavoidable. The things described are new 
in science, and new names are required by which to 
designate them. Uninstructed readers are unac- 
quainted with these objects, as well as with their 
names. If the objects were studied, which can be 
done only by observation, less difficulty would be 
found in comprehending the words, although they 
are derived from Greek and Latin roots. It would 
be extremely difficult to give to names compounded 
of English terms, that scientific precision which is 
attainable by using Greek and Latin. Explanatory 
dictionaries, however, of words, common and scien- 
tific, borrowed from these languages, have been pub- 
lished ; so that no one is compelled to study ancient 
tongues for six or seven years, for the sake of under- 



LECTURE T. 41 

Standing the derivation of a few hundreds of scien- 
tific terms. In a very useful work by Dr. R. Har- 
rison Black, entitled 'The Student's Manual,' 
(published by Longman Si Co. ), the Greek roots 
are printed in the Greek character, and also in the 
Roman, by which means unlearned readers may 
become acquainted with the Greek letters, and 
many common Greek words, almost without an 
effort. 

It has often been observed, that the Greeks them- 
selves studied no language except their own, and 
yet attained to exquisite delicacy and dexterity in 
the use of it ; and why may not the English do as 
much ? The objection, ihat Greek is a primitive, 
and English a derivative tongue, is met by the an- 
swer, that every word is merely a sound indicative 
of an idea or an emotion, and that it makes no dif- 
ference in the possibility of comprehending the 
meaning of a word, whether the sound was invent- 
ed by the English themselves, or borrowed by them 
from the Greeks or Romans. In learning the mean- 
ing of Greek words, the student must connect the 
thing signified directly with the expression, because 
he has no etymology to render the Greek intelligi- 
ble. But if he can comprehend Greek by merely 
connecting the idea with the word, why may he not 
learn to understand English by a similar process ? 
It may be added, that some of the most eminent of 
our English authors, such as Shakspeare, Burns, 
CoBBETT, and a whole host of female writers, had 
little or no acquaintance with the dead languages ; 



42 LECTURE I. 

and that there are not wanting instances of learned 
critics, like Bentley, whose classical knowledge 
did not enable them to express themselves in their 
native tongue with tolerable correctness, graceful- 
ness, and ease. 

We have the testimony of several of the greatest 
names in English literature against the existing prac- 
tice. ' It is deplorable,' says Cow^ley in his Es- 
says, ' to consider the loss which children make of 
their time at most schools, employing or rather cast- 
ing away, six or seven years in the learning of words 
only, and that very imperfectly.' 

Locke, in his treatise on education, asks : ' Would 
not a Chinese, who took notice of our way of breed- 
ing, be apt to imagine that all our young gentlemen 
were designed to be teachers and professors of the 
dead languages of foreign countries, and not to be 
men of business in their own ?' 

Gibbon the historian remarks, that ^ a finished 
scholar may emerge from the head of Westminster 
or Eton, in total ignorance of the business and con- 
versation of English gentlemen in the latter end of 
the eighteenth century.' 

Mr. Moore, who cites these authorities in his 
notices of the Life of Lord Byron,* adds, that that 
gifted poet was a miserable Greek and Latin scholar 
while he attended Harrow school .; that he hated 
the task of learning these languages ; and that he 
acquired his astonishing copiousness, flexibility, and 
beauty of style, by extensive miscellaneous reading 

* Vol. i. p. 89, 90. Murray, 1832. 



LECTURE I. 43 

in his native tongue. Milton says, — ^ Tiiough a 
linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues 
that Babel cleft this world into, yet, if he have not 
studied the solid things in them, as well as the 
words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to 
be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or 
tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect 
only.' And Dr. Adam Smith observes, that ' it 
seldom happens that a man, in any part of his life, 
derives any conveniency or advantage from some of 
the most laborious and troublesome parts of his edu- 
cation.' — Wealth ofJVations, B. v. c. 1. 

Education, then, consisting chiefly of languages, 
leaves the mind of the pupil ignorant of things, ig- 
norant of men, and ignorant of the constitution of 
the social system in which he is to move. He is 
trained in abstraction, and among shadows, and 
when he enters practical life he finds that his real 
education is only then at its commencement. 

Education consisting of a knowledge of natural 
science, on the contrary, produces an early and a 
deep conviction that man is made for action ; that 
he is placed in a theatre of agents, which he must 
direct, or to which he must accommodate his con- 
duct; that everything in the world is regulated by 
laws instituted by the Creator ; that all objects 
which exist — animate and inanimate — have re- 
ceived definite qualities and constitutions, and that 
good arises from their proper, and evil from their 
improper application. Education makes known what 
these qualities are. It invigorates the understanding, 
5 



44 LECTURE I. 

and thereby gives boldness to the intellect, and iih- 
dependence to the sentiments. 

The practical effect of these two modes of instruc- 
tion must be widely different. In my next lecture 
I shall consider the condition of the industrious class- 
es, and also that of females of every rank, in regard 
to education, and offer a few suggestions on the 
means of imparting to both, the elements of useful 
and entertaining knowledge. 



LECTURE II. 

The question naturally presents itself — What 
constitutes a good education ? The answer will be 
found by attending to the distinction between means 
and an end. If an architect is employed to build 
a house, he first considers the locality, next pre- 
pares a plan, and then calls in the aid of practical 
workmen, to combine his materials into the propos- 
ed erection. To be able to produce a plan, char- 
acterized at once by taste, elegance, and commodi- 
ous arrangement, the architect requires to have 
studied mathematics and drawing. These constitute 
the elementary knowledge by means of which he is 
enabled to invent a plan. But the design itself is 
only the means towards the main end, the erection 
of a house. The acquisition and subsequent com- 
bination of the materials according to the design, 
alone accomplish the object. Now, drawing and 
mathematics are admirable attainments viewed, as 
means towards producing a splendid palace, a com- 
modious bridge, or a stupendous aqueduct ; but if 
they produce nothing but themselves ; or, if they 
produce plans merely, pleasing to the fancy, and 
not applicable to purposes of utility, they must be 



46 LECTURE lU 

viewed as mere Ingenious recreations or elegant ac- 
complishments. What drawing and mathematics 
are to practical house-building, languages, writing, 
and arithmetic, are to a knowledge of things, and to 
practical business. They are means of acquiring 
knowledge ; and knowledge itself is only the materi- 
al, by applying which, practically and skilfully, busi- 
ness may be transacted, and enjoyment procured. 
Indeed, 1 might go farther, and say that drawing and 
mathematics embody ideas ; whereas language in 
itself, apart from its applications, is a mere collection 
of arbitrary sounds. To limit the education of a man 
who is destined to act the part of a husband, father, 
and member of society engaged in practical affairs, 
to reading, writing, accounts, and the dead languages, 
is worse than the project of arresting the educa- 
tion of the architect at drawing, mathematics, and 
designing, without teaching him knowledge of mate- 
rials, their strength, durability, cost, and modes of 
arrangement. A young lady who can draw a very 
handsome cottage could not rear a fabric corres- 
ponding to it. She is not an architect, and the dif- 
ference between her and an architect consists in this, 
— that she is defective in all the practical knowledge, 
skill, and experience, which are indispensable to 
render her design an actual house. A scholar in 
Greek and Latin is not a man of business, for a sim- 
ilar reason. He is not instructed in that knowledge 
of affairs, and things that exist, the management of 
which constitutes practical business. As, however, 
the architect must begin by learning to draw, so the 



LECTURE II. 47 

practical member of society must commence by- 
studying the means for acquiring knowledge ; and I 
proceed to inquire what these means are. 

The English language, writing, and arithmetic, 
then, are important means of acquiring and commu- 
nicating knowledge. They ought to be sedulously 
taught, and by the most approved methods. Alge- 
bra and pure mathematics also belong to the class 
of means. The former relates solely to numbers 
and their relations ; the latter to portions of space 
and their proportions. The most profound skill in 
them, is compatible with extensive ignorance con- 
cerning every object, topic and relation, that does 
not essentially imply exact proportions of number 
and space. All languages, likewise, belong to the 
class of means. In preferring one to another, we 
ought to be guided by the principle of utility ; — 
that in which most knowledge is contained is most 
useful. For this reason, French, German, and Ital- 
ian, appear to me more valuable acquirements than 
Greek and Latin. 

The second object of education is the attainment of 
knowledge itself. 

If the season for obtaining real knowledge be ded- 
icated to the study of languages, the individual enters 
on life in a state of qualification for practical business, 
similar to that of the lady for the practice of archi- 
tecture, after having completed her studies in draw- 
ing. He is deficient in many acquirements that 
would be substantially useful for the preservation of 
health and conducting of affairs. He knows noth- 



48 



LECTtJRE II, 



ing about the structure of his own body, and very 
little aboot the causes which support it in health or 
subject it to disease : he is very imperfectly inform- 
ed concerning the cons|itution of his own mind, and 
the relations established between himself and other 
beings : he is not instructed in any science ; knows, 
nothing of the principles of trade ; is profo4.indly ig- 
norant of the laws of his country, which he is called 
on to obey and even to administer ; and, in short, i^ 
sent into society with little other preparation than a 
stock of prejudices gathered from the nursery, and 
of vague imaginations about the greatness of Greece 
and Rome, the beauties of classical literature, and 
the vast superiority of learned pedantry over practi- 
cal sense. 

To discover the evils that arise from this misdirec- 
tion of education, we have only to advert to the nu- 
merous cases of individuals who ruin their constitu- 
tions, and die in youth or middle age, not from the 
fury of ungovernable passions which knowledge could 
not subdue, but from sheer ignorance of the physic- 
al conditions necessary to health ; — or to the ruin- 
ed fortunes and broken hearts clearly referrible to 
the ignorance of individuals of their own incapacity 
for the business in which they have embarked, — of 
the characters of those with whom they have con- 
nected themselves, — of the natural laws which gov- 
ern production, or of the civil laws which regulate 
the transactions of men in particular states; — and 
to ask, how many of these calamities might have 
been avoided by instruction and by proper discipline 



LECTURE II. 49 

of the mind in the fields of observation and reflec- 
tion. 

To understand what constitutes useful and practi- 
cal knowledge, you are requested to bear in mind 
the principles which I laid down and illustrated in the 
first lecture, — that every inanimate object and eve- 
ry living being has received a definite constitution 
from the Creator, in virtue of which it stands in one 
or other of two relations towards man : — either its nat- 
ural qualities are such as he may bend to the pur- 
poses of his own enjoyment, or they are too gigantic 
to acknowledge his control, and he must accommo- 
date his conduct to their sway. Water may be 
pointed to as an example of the first class : Man, as 
I formerly observed, may turn the roaring torrent 
from its course, ere it dashes over the mountain-cliff, 
and conduct it, as his humble slave, to his mill, 
where it may be made to grind his corn, weave his 
cloth, forge his iron, or spin his thread, according to 
the direction given to it by his skill : or, he may in- 
close it in strong matallic boilers, by fire convert it 
into steam, and bend its powers to propel his ship, 
in the face of the stormy winds and waves, to any 
wished-for haven : or, he may borrow from it wings 
with which to fly over field and meadow on the 
smooth lines of his artificial railway. But before he 
can command these high enjoyments, how minute 
and accurate must be his study of water and the 
laws by which it is governed, and of mechanical phi- 
losophy and its applications ! and how vast, skilful, 
and complicated must be his combinations of the 



50 LECTURE II. 

rude materials with which nature has furnished him ! 
Wind affords an instance of the powers which man 
cannot control, and to which he must accommodate 
his conduct. He cannot guide the air as he does 
the stream of water ; but to his mill-house he may 
give a revolving top, so that let the wind blow from 
what point it listeth, his sails will spread their bo- 
soms directly to the breeze. He cannot bid the gale 
blow gently or with violence, as his machinery may 
require, to crush into dust a load of flint, or revolve 
lightly in forcing the slender saw through the taper- 
ing pine : but he can regulate his canvass according 
to the force required, so that the wind, if impetuous, 
shall meet a contracted surface on which to expend 
its force; and, if more calm, shall be caught by a 
broad expanded sail. Man has no power over the 
direction of the wind on the ocean : but by the skil- 
ful construction of his vessel, the adaptation of his 
masts and sails, and the giant power of the helm, he 
can so accommodate his bark to its influence, that he 
can steer in every direction save that from which 
the wind directly blows ; nay, by skill and persever- 
ance, he can accomplish even this, and, by tacking, 
gain upon the wind. Here also, let us remark how 
much observation of things that exist, and how much 
skilful combination, and practical adaptation of the 
powers which man can yield to the nature and course 
of those which defy his control, must be put forth 
before this glorious triumph of his ingenuity can be 
accomplished. 



LECTURE II. 51 

These Illustrations are of universal application. 
In common life we may require neither to forge, to 
weave, to steer, nor to spin ; but we all require to 
prosecute some vocation of usefulness and duty, 
otherwise we exist in vain. Now, let us move in 
what circle we may, we are encompassed by the el- 
ements of nature, which minister to our health and 
enjoyment, or to our detriment and discomfort, ac- 
cording as we use them wisely or the reverse, ac- 
cording as we adapt our conduct to their real quali- 
ties or run counter to their influence. We are sur- 
rounded by human beings, and are influenced by the 
great tides of public affairs ; and without knowledge 
of external nature, and of the nature of man, his 
history, laws, and institutions, we shall be no more 
capable of acting well and wisely through life than 
the mariner of steering successfully, whhout helm, 
compass, or chart. 

Moral and religious instruction must continue to 
be acquired during life. Hitherto, the great object 
of preachers has been to communicate this kind of 
knowledge, and I sincerely wish success to their ef- 
forts. I do not here enlarge on moral and religious 
education, because society is alive to its importance. 
To give full efl?ect to that teaching, I consider a 
trained and enlightened intellect, and disciplined 
moral sentiments to be indispensably necessary, and 
these can be attained only by combining secular with 
sacred knowledge. 

To attain useful knowledge of natural objects, and 
the laws of their action, we require to study Chem- 



52 LECTURE II. 

istiy, Anatomy, Natural History, and Natural Phi- 
losophy. These make us acquainted with existing 
nature, and ought to constitute important branches 
of education. For the industrious portions of the 
people, it is not necessary to teach them in minute 
detail. Elementary instruction by means of prima- 
ry schools, and, at a later age, by popular lectures, 
elucidating the leading principles and applications of 
these sciences, would be of incalculable benefit. It is 
delightful to be able to record that a neighboring na- 
tion — Prussia — has set a noble example to Eu- 
rope on the subject of Education. In Prussia,* as 
in Germany generally, it is obligatory on all parents 
to send their children to school from the ages of sev- 
en to fourteen, beginning earlier if they choose ; and 
the duly is enforced by penalties. Each parish is 
bound to support an elementary school ; each con- 
siderable town a burgher school for the more advanc- 
ed studies ; each considerable district a gymnasium 
for classical studies ; and each province has its uni- 
versity. The parish-school is supported by the par- 
ish, and for its management all the landholders and 
heads of families are formed into a union, which ap- 
points a committee to inspect and watch over the 
school. The system of instruction is prescribed by 
authority, and is nearly uniform for the whole mon- 
archy. It embraces, in the elementary schools, 1. 
Religion and morals ; 2. The German tongue ; 3. 
Elements of geometry and drawing ; 4. Arithmetic, 

* Edinburgh Review, No. 116. 



LECTURE II. 53 

pure and applied ; 5. The elements of physics, 
meaning chemistry and natural philosophy, general 
history, and the history of Prussia ; 6. Singing ; 7. 
Writing; 8. Gymnastic exercises; 9. ^ The more 
simple manual labors,' by which seems to be meant 
the use of tools employed in the most common oc- 
cupations, such as the spade, pick-axe, saw, plane, 
file, trowel, stone-chisel, he. The burgher school 
embraces the same branches carried farther, with 
the addition of a little Latin, the study of which 
is not however universally enforced. The instruc- 
tion is not gratuitous, except to the poor. The pro- 
vision to be made by the parish, embraces, 1st, A 
salary to the schoolmaster, with a retired allowance for 
him in old age ; 2d, A school-house, well aired and 
heated ; 3d, Books, maps, models for drawing, col- 
lections in natural history, gymnastic apparatus, &z;c. ; 
4th, Aid to poor scholars. The fund is raised by 
contributions, levied on the inhabitants according to 
the amount of their property or the produce of their 
industry, and by moderate fees, which are not paid 
to the schoolmaster, but to the parochial managers. 
There are cantonal courts, and inspectors, who con- 
trol and inspect all the schools in a canton ; others 
for departments, with a wider authority ; others, with 
still more extensive powers, for the provinces ; and, 
above all, there is the minister of public instruction. 
In all the courts, councils, or commissions, exercis- 
ing authority over the schools of any class, there are 
a few of the clergy, — Protestant and Catholic be- 
ing admitted according as the scholars belong to the 



54 LECTURE II. 

• 

one or the other church ; and great care Is taken to 
prevent the slightest offence from being offered to 
the rehgious feelings of any party. The choice of 
the books in the elementary schools is left to the lo- 
cal committees. There are half-yearly examina- 
tions ; and the boys leaving school obtain certificates 
of their capacity and their moral and religious dispo- 
sitions, which must be produced when they go to the 
communion, or enter into apprenticeship or service. 
The Prussian plan embraces also what are of essen- 
tial importance, schools for training persons to act as 
teachers. There are thirty-four of these seminaries, 
where, besides studying the different branches of 
knowledge to be taught, they learn also the art of 
instruction. 

A similar system of education is pursued in the 
boarding-schools of Germany. The/ollowing letter, 
WTitten by a young gentleman who is personally 
known to me, and who, after studying at the high 
School of Edinburgh, went to Cassel and Gottingen, 
is lively and instructive. 

' In Germany, as in England, boarding-schools 
are the principal seminaries of education, day-schools 
like those which we have in Edinburgh being seldom 
if ever to be met with. These boarding-schools are 
attended not only by the boys who reside with the 
teacher, but also by what are called day-boarders ; 
and masters for drawing, dancing, music, and other 
ornamental and useful accomplishments, teach at 
stated hours, as in similar establishments in this 
country. There are in Germany no such institutions 



LECTURE II. 



55 



as our High School, where almost nothing but Latin 
is taught ; and indeed no one thinks of learning Lat- 
in, except those who are intended for the learned 
professions, and absolutely require a knowledge of it. 
Thus boys in general, instead of spending five or six 
years in a state of misery, are enabled to acquire 
an extensive stock of useful and practical informa- 



tion. 



In German boarding-schools, natural history is a 
prominent object of pursuit, and the boys are in- 
structed in the outlines of Zoology, Ornithology, 
Entomology, and Mineralogy. Tliis, I believe, is a 
branch of education never taught in seminaries of 
the same description in Britain ; but it is devoured 
by the learners on the Continent with the utmost 
avidity. There the' teacher Is not an object of fear, 
but the friend of his pupils. He takes them, about 
once a fortnight, to visit some manufactory in the 
neighborhood, where they are generally received 
with kindness, and are conveyed through the whole 
building by the owners, who seem to have pleasure 
in pointing out the uses of the various parts of the 
machinery, and in explaining to their juvenile visitors 
the different operations which are carried on. Sup- 
pose, for example, that an expedition is undertaken 
to a paper-mill : the boys begin their scrutiny by in- 
specting the rags in the condition in which they are 
at first brought in ; then they are made to remark 
the processes of cutting them, of forming the paste, 
of sizing the paper, &£C., with the machinery by 
which all this is executed. On their return, they 
6 



56 LECTURE II. 

are required to write out an account of the manu- 
factory, of the operations performed in it, and of the 
manufactured article. 

* During the summer months, pedestrian excur- 
sions are undertaken, extending to a period of per- 
haps two, three, or four weeks. Everything worthy 
of attention is pointed out to the boys as they go 
along; and deviations are made on all sides, for the 
purpose of inspecting every manufactory, old castle, 
and other remarkable objects in the neighborhood. 
Minerals, plants, and insects are collected as they 
proceed, and thus they begin early to appreciate and 
enjoy the beauties of external nature. If they hap- 
pen to be travelling in the mountainous districts of 
the Harlz, they descend into the mines, and see the 
methods of excavating the ore, working the shafts, 
and ventilating and draining the mine. Ascending 
again to the surface, they become acquainted with 
the machinery by which the minerals are brought 
up, the processes of separating the ore from the sul- 
phur, and the silver from the lead, and the mode in 
which the former metal is coined into money. 

' Having become familiar with these operations, 
the boys next, perhaps, visit the iron-works, and 
here a new scene of gratification is opened up to their 
faculties. The furnaces, the principles of the dif- 
ferent kinds of bellows, the method of casting the 
iron and forming the moulds, — everything, in short, 
is presented to their senses, and fully expounded to 
them. In like manner they are taken to the salt- 
works, and manufactories of porcelain, glass, acids. 



LECTURE II. ^'^ 



alkalies, and other chemical bodies, with which that 
part of Germany abounds. If any mineral springs 
be in the neighborhood, these are visited, and the 
nature and properties of the water explained. In 
short, no opportunity is neglected, by which addi- 
tions to their knowledge may be made. In this way, 
I may say without exaggeration, they acquire, in the 
course of a single forenoon, a greater amount of use- 
ful, practical, and entertaining knowledge, than they 
could obtain in six months at a grammar-school. 
For my own part, at least, I learned more in one 
year at Cassel, than during the five preceding 
which were spent in Edinburgh. This knowledge, 
too, is of a kind that remains indehbly written on 
the memory, and that is often recalled, in after life, 
with pleasure and satisfaction. How different were 
my feeUngs, when thus employed, from those which 
tormented me in that place of misery, the High 
School of Edinburgh 1 * 

' These journeys not only have a beneficial eflfect 
on the mind, but also conduce, in no small degree, 

* This letter was inserted In No. XXX of the Phrenological 
Journal, and the Editor here subjoins the following note : ' Our 
correspondent's language is strong, but as we know it to be 
nothing more than the expression of honest and heartfelt indig- 
nation, we have allowed it to remain unmodified. We our- 
selves can never forget the tosdium vitca which attended us, 
during the lingering years in which we made a strenuous but 
unsuccessful attempt to overcome the difficulties of Latin Syn- 
tax at the High School of Edinburgh. Often did we envy the 
condition of boys who labored in the field for a scanty subsist- 
ence, but whose minds were free from the intolerable and spir- 
^t-breaking incubus of Latin grammar.' 



58 LECTURE II. 

to the growth and consolidation of the body. They 
are performed by short and easy stages, so as not to 
occasion fatigue. 

* On their return home, the boys write an account 
of their travels, in which they describe the nature of 
the country through which they have passed, and 
its various productions, minerals, and manufactures. 
This is corrected and improved by the teacher. 
The minerals and plants which have been collect- 
ed, serve at school to illustrate the lessons. The 
boys also go through a regular course of study, and 
receive lessons on Religion, Geography, French, 
and the Elements of Geometry. They are taught 
also the Elements of Astronomy ; not merely the 
abstract particulars generally given in courses of 
geography in this country, relative to the moon's 
distance, the diameter and period of revolution of 
the earth, and the like, but also the relative posi- 
tions of the principal constellations. The figure of 
cubes, cones, octagons, pyramids, and other geome- 
trical figures, are impressed upon the minds of the 
junior boys, by pieces of w^ood cut into the proper 
shapes. Latin is taught to those who particularly 
desire it. Poles are erected in the garden for gym- 
nastics, and the boys receive every encouragement 
to take muscular excsrcise. 

^Now, this method of education seems to me, — 
indeed I know experimentally that it is^ — so vastly 
superior to that which is in vogue in Edinburgh, 
that I can never cease to wonder that the barba- 
risms of the dark ages should still be allowed ta 



LECTURE II. 59 

exert their influence among us. In Germany, the 
boys enter the schools which I have described, at 
the age of eight or nine, and leave them when about 
fourteen or fifteen, at which period those intended 
for the karned professions enter the lyceums, pre- 
paratory to enrolling their names at the universities. 
Now, whether is it more rational for a boy, at that 
period of life to consume his valuable time in the 
dreary halls of the High School in acquiring scarce- 
ly one useful idea, or to employ it in the pursuit of 
substantial knowledge ? For my own part, I shall 
always look back on the time which I spent in ob- 
taining a superficial acquaintance with the Latin 
tongue as a hideous blank in my existence.' 

In this country we have not enjoyed the prepara- 
tory training which fits the poorest peasant in Prus- 
sia for relishing instruction in the higher branches of 
science ; and not only has education in useful know- 
ledge been neglected, but prejudices are entertained 
by many excellent persons against it. Dr. Drum- 
MOND * has furnished an admirable answer to this 
objection. The passage is long, but its excellence 
is my apology for introducing it. 

' You will perhaps,' says he, ' treat the idea of 
teaching matters of science to the industrious classes 
generally, as chimerical ; but be not over hasty. It 
is still too common a persuasion, that knowledge 

* See the excellent and eloquent ' Letters to a Young Natu- 
ralist on the Study of Nature and Natural Theology. By 
James L. Drummond, M. D ." &c. Longman <fe Co. Lon- 
don, 12mo. pp. 342. 

6* 



60 LECTURE Ilr 

should be a monoply, belonging solely to the learn- 
ed and highly educated ; but there is a vast fund of 
information of the very highest value^ which can be 
understood by persons who have had little previous 
tutoring, either in school or university. There is a 
great mass of knowledge which admits of easy ex- 
planation, and which can be comprehended by men 
of the most moderate education ; and why is it with- 
held from them ? Is the sun still to shine in the 
heavens, the planets to roll on in their orbits, the 
comets to shoot beyond imagination's wing into the 
regions of night, and yet our brethren of the human 
race, a very small portion excepted, to know no 
more about them than merely that they are the sun 
and stars ? 

' Will it be said that the great truths of Astronomy 
can only be made plain to the understandings of 
those who are profound mathematicians and philoso- 
phers ? There are lengths in every science, indeed, 
which can only be gained by powerful talent and 
long and deep study ; but although it required a 
Newton to unfold the mysteries of the planetary 
motions, as guided and controlled by the law of 
gravitation, still these motions, and most of the sub- 
lime facts of astronomy, can be comprehended by 
the bulk of the people, from plain illustrations, given 
in plain and perspicuous language. But of this, 
and of nature in general, they are kept in pro- 
found ignorance. Simple truths, when simply ex- 
plained, are more easily comprehended, I believe, 
than is commonly supposed ; and I feel satisfied, 



LECTURE II. 61 

that the task of teaching mankind, in general,* such 
solid and various knowledge as would tend most 
powerfully to advance both civilization and morali- 
ty, is anything but hopeless. Knowledge has been 
truly said by Bacon to be power; and with equal, 
at least, if not greater truth, it may be asserted, that, 
when pursued with a reference to the God of all na- 
ture, it is virtue. There is no limit to the study of 
the Almighty in his works. All nature, from the 
north to the south, and from the east to the west, 
offers examples innumerable of the power and wis- 
dom with which He works throughout the visible 
world before us. In the heavens we find suns the 
centres of systems, and an endless series of rolling 
worlds ; and when we descend from the considera- 
tion of suns and systems, — of stars wheeling in 
their orbits with a velocity quicker than thought, — 
of worlds, compared with which the globe we inhab- 
it is in magnitude as a mole-hill, — how delightful 
is it to find, that on this ball, insignificant as it is in 
comparison with thousands of the heavenly orbs, — 
the God of all displays himself in characters not less 
strong to the inquiring mind than in the boundless 
ocean of space. 

' Let us consider an insect, or let us study the 
laws which dh-ect a plant ; let us contemplate the 
solar system, or inquire into the history of an ant- 
hill or an honey-comb ; the mind, the truly valuable 
part of the compound called Man, recognizes in the 
vast, as well as in the minute, and vice versa, the 
master mind, God, the omnipotent power, which 



62 LECTURE II. 

formed and which governs the mighty whole, in all 
its magnitudes, in all its minima. Paley observes 
in his Natural Theology, — a work which I can 
never too highly recommend to your notice, — that 
the works of nature want only to be contemplated. 
When contemplated, they have every thing in them 
which can astonish by their greatness ; for, of the 
vast scale of operation through which our discove- 
ries carry us, at one end we see an intelligent pow- 
er arranging planetary systems, — fixing, for in- 
stance, the trajectory of Saturn, or constructing a 
ring of 200,000 miles diameter, to surround his bo- 
dy, and be suspended like a magnificent arch, over 
the heads of his inhabitants ; and, on the other, 
bending a hooked tooth, concerting and providing 
an appropriate mechanism for the clasping and re- 
clasping of the filaments of the feather of the hum- 
ming-bird ! We have proof not only of both these 
works proceeding from an intelligent agent, but of 
their proceeding from the same agent; for, in the 
first place, we can trace an identity of plan, a con- 
nection of system, from Saturn to our own globe ; 
and when arrived upon our globe, we can. In the sec- 
ond place, pursue the connection through all the 
organized, especially the animated, bodies which it 
supports. We can observe marks of a common re- 
lation, as well to one another, as to the elements of 
which their habitation is composed. Therefore, one 
mind hath planned,* or at least hath prescribed a 
general plan for all these productions. One Being 
has been concerned m all.' 



LECTURE II. ^^ 



Knowledge of man himself, his menial endow- 
ments, his history, and his institutions, belongs to 
the class of useful knowledge. In addition to the 
sciences already mentioned, therefore, an useful ed- 
ucation would embrace instruction in menial philos- 
ophy, geography, civil history, political economy, 
and religion. A taste or genius for poetry, music, 
painting, sculpture or languages, is bestowed by na- 
ture on particular individuals, and these branches of 
knowledge ought to be taught to those who desire 
them. They are of great value as means of elevat- 
ing and refining human nature ; but unless there is 
in the mind a decided genius for them, they ought 
not to be made the great objects of education, nor the 
business of life. The fine arts should be taught as 
enjoyments, and a relish for them encouraged ; but 
in common minds, a considerable amount of moral 
and intellectual cultivation must precede their due 
appreciation. 

Farther, as long as the present institutions of so- 
ciety exist, some knowledge of Greek and Latin is 
indispensable to young men who mean to pursue 
divinity, medicine, or law, as a profession. 

Suppose, then, knowledge to be obtained, we 
may inquire into its uses. The first use of know- 
ledge is the preservation of health. This, although 
greatly overlooked in established systems of educa- 
tion, is of paramount importance. Life depends on 
it, and also the power of exercising with effect all the 
mental functions. There are two modes of instruct- 
ing an individual in the preservation of health, the 



64 



LECTURE II. 



one informing hinn as a matte of fact concerning the 
conditions on which it depends, and admonishing 
him by way of precept to observe them, — the oth- 
er, by expounding to his intellect the constitution 
of his bodily frame, and teaching him the uses of its 
various parts, the abuses of them, the relations es- 
tablished between his constitution and external ob- 
jects, such as food, air, water, heat, cold, &tc., and 
the consequences of observance or neglect of these 
relations. The former method addresses the mem- 
ory chiefly, the latter the judgment. The former 
comes home to the mind, enforced only by the au- 
thority of the teacher ; the latter is felt to be an ex- 
position of the system of creation, and deeply inter- 
ests at once the intellect and affections. The for- 
mer affords rules for particular cases ; the latter 
general principles, which the mind can apply in new 
emergencies. 

Such instruction as is here recommended implies 
an exposition of the principles of anatomy and phys- 
iology. 

The next use of knowledge is to enable us to ex- 
ercise the mental faculties themselves, so as to ren- 
der them vigorous and vivacious, and to promote 
their enjoyment. 

The wonderful effect of a change from inactivity 
to bustle and employment is well known in com- 
mon life, and is explicable only on the principle of 
strengthening the mind by a due amount of exer- 
cise. In nine cases out of ten, a visit to a watering 
place, or a journey through an interesting country, 



LECTURE II. 65 

restores health more by giving healthy excitement 
to the mind than by the water swallowed, or the lo- 
comotion endured. And it is well known that un- 
der strong excitement, weak and delicate persons 
will not only exert double muscular force, but even 
prove superior to the effects of miasma and conta- 
gion, to which, when unexcited, they w^ould have 
been the first victims. In the army also, it is pro- 
verbial, that the time of fatigue and danger, is not 
the time of disease. It is in the inactive and list- 
less months of a campaign, that crowds of patients 
pass to the hospitals. In both these cases, it is 
active exercise, giving strength to the mind, and, 
through it, healthy vigor to the body which pro- 
duces the effect. 

Now, education in real knowledge connects our 
sympathies with living beings and practical life ; it 
stimulates us to action, and furnishes us not only 
with the means of planning useful occupation, but 
with the materials for executing our plans. In such 
action there is the highest enjoyment. 

The principles which I have hitherto advanced 
are applicable to all classes of human beings; but 
the chief objects of the present lectures are the ed- 
ucation, 1st, Of the industrious portion of the com- 
munity, including all who live by their labor and 
talents, and do not belong to the learned professions; 
and, 2dly, Of females of every rank, for whom no 
adequate means of instruction in useful knowledge 
are provided. 

1. In regard to the education of the industrious 
classes. They constitute between thirteen and four- 



66 LECTURE II. 

teen out of the sixteen millions of population in 
Great Britain. The kind of education which they 
ought to receive will depend on the objects which 
we assign to their lives. If they have been created 
by Providence merely to toil and pay taxes, to eat, 
sleep, and transmit existence to future generations, a 
limited education may suffice : but if they are born 
with the full faculties of moral, intellectual, and re- 
ligious beings ; if they are as capable, when instruct- 
ed, of studying the works of God, of obeying his 
laws, of loving Him and admiring his institutions, as 
anv class of the community ; in short, if they are ra- 
tional beings, capable of all the duties, and suscepti- 
ble of all the enjoyments, which belong to the ra- 
tional character, then no education is sufficient for 
them which leaves any portion of their highest pow- 
ers waste and unproductive. This is the light in 
which I regard them ; and the grand question pre- 
sents itself. What mode of life, and what kind of 
pursuits, are best adapted to the nature of man? 
In answering this question, we must keep in mind, 
that human nature consists of the following elements : 

1st, An organized body, requiring food, exercise, 
and rest, in due proportions ; 

2d, Animal propensities, requiring gratification ; 

3d, Moral sentiments, demanding exercise and 
enjoyment ; 

4tb, Intellectual faculties, calculated to acquire 
knowledge, and intended to preside over the volun- 
tary bodily functions, and the other departments of 
mind. 



LECTURE II. 67 

In the present state of society, the industrious 
classes, or great mass of the people, live in^the ha- 
bitual infringement of the most important laws of 
their nature. Life with them is spent to so great 
an extent in labor, that their moral and intellectual 
powers are stinted of exercise and gratification ; and 
hence their mental enjoyments are chiefly those af- 
forded by the animal propensities : in other words, 
there existence is too little rational ; they are rath- 
er organized machines than moral and intellectual 
beings. The chief duty performed by their higher 
faculties is not to afford predominant sources of en- 
joyment, but to communicate so much intelligence 
and honesty, as to enable them to execute their la- 
bors skilfully and with fidelity. I speak, of course, 
of the great body of the laboring population: there 
are many individual exceptions, who possess higher 
attainments ; and I mean no disrespect even to this 
most deserving portion of society : on the contrary, 
I represent their condition in what appears to me to 
be a true light, only witli a view to excite them to 
amend it. 

Does human nature, then, admit of such a modi- 
fication of the employments and habits of this class, 
as to raise them to the condition of beings whose chief 
pleasures shall be derived from their rational natures ^ 
— that is, creatures whose bodily powers and ani- 
mal propensities shall be subservient to their moral 
and intellectual faculties, and who shall derive their 
leading enjoyment from the latter. To attain this 
end, it would not be necessary that they should cease 
7 



68 LECTURE II. 

to labor ; on the contrary, the necessity of labor to 
the enjoyment of life is imprinted in strong charac- 
ters on the structure of man. The osseous, muscu- 
lar, and nervous systems of the body, all require ex- 
ercise as a condition of health ; while the digestive 
and sanguiferous apparatus rapidly fall in disorder, 
if due exertion is neglected. Exercise of the body 
is labor ; and labor directed to a useful purpose is 
as beneficial to the corporeal organs, and far more 
pleasing to the mind, than when undertaken for no 
end but the preservation of health. Commerce is 
rendered advantageous by the Creator, because dif- 
ferent climates yield different productions. Agri- 
culture, manufactures, and commerce, therefore, 
are adapted to man's nature, and 1 am not their en- 
emy. But they are not the ends of human exist- 
ence, even on earth. Labor is beneficial to the 
whole human economy, and it is a mere delusion to 
regard it as in itself an evil ; but the great principle 
is, that it must be moderate both in severity and du- 
ration, in order that men may enjoy, and not be op- 
pressed by it. I say enjoy, it 5 because moderate 
exertion is pleasure, and it has been only labor car- 
ried to excess, which has given rise to the common 
opinion that retirement from active industry is the 
goal of happiness. It may be objected that a heal- 
thy and vigorous man is not oppressed by ten or 
twelve hours' labor a-day ; and I grant that, if he 
be well fed, his physical strength may not be so 
much exhausted by this exertion as to cause him 
pain. But this is regarding him merely as a work- 



LECTURE II. 69 

ing animal. My proposition is, that after ten or 
twelve hours of muscular exertion a-day, continued 
for six days in the week, the laborer is not in a fit 
condition for that active exercise of his moral and 
intellectual faculties which alone constitutes him a 
rational being. The exercise of these powers de- 
pends on the condition of the brain and nervous sys- 
tem ; and these are exhausted and deadened by too 
much muscular exertion. The fox-hunter and 
ploughman fall asleep when they sit within doors, 
and attempt to read or think. The truth of this 
proposition is demonstrable on physiological princi- 
ples, and is supported by general experience ; nev- 
ertheless, the teachers of mankind have too often 
neglected it. The first change, therefore, must be 
to limit the hours of labor, and to dedicate a por- 
tion of time daily to the exercise of the mental fac- 
ulties. 

So far from this limitation being unattainable, it 
appears to me that the progress of arts, sciences, 
and society, is rapidly forcing its adoption. Ordi- 
nary observers appear to conceive man's chief end, 
in Britain at least, to be to manufacture hard-ware, 
broad-cloth, and cotton goods, for the use of the 
whole world, and to store up wealth. They forget 
that the same impulse which inspires the British with 
so much ardor in manufacturing, will sooner or later 
inspire other nations also ; and that, if all Europe 
shall follow our example, and employ efficient ma- 
chinery and a large proportion of their population 
in our branches of industry, which they are fast do- 



70 LECTURj: II, 

ing, the four quarters of the glohe will at length be 
deluged with manufactured goods, only part of which 
will be required. When this state of things shall 
arrive, — and in proportion as knowledge and civili- 
zation are diffused it will approach, — men will be 
compelled, by dire necessity, to abridge their toil, 
because excessive labor will not be remunerated. 
The admirable inventions which are the boast and 
glory of civilized men, are believed by many persons 
to be at this moment adding to the misery and deg- 
radation of the people. Power-looms, steam-car- 
riages, and steam-ships, it is asserted, have all hith- 
erto operated directly in increasing the hours of ex- 
ertion, and abridging the reward of the laborer ! 
Can we believe that God has bestowed on us the 
gift of an almost creative power, solely to increase 
the wretchedness of the many, and minister to the 
luxury of the few ? Impossible. The ultimate ef- 
fect of mechanical inventions on human society ap- 
pears not yet to be divined.. I hail them as the 
grand instruments of civilization, by giving leisure to 
the great mass of the people to cultivate and enjoy 
their moral, intellectual, and religious powers. 

One requisite to enable man to follow pursuits re^ 
ferrible to his higher endowments, is provision for 
the wants of his animal nature, viz. food, raiment, 
and comfortable lodging. It is clear that muscular 
power, intellect, and mechanical skill, have been 
conferred on him, whh the design that he should 
build houses, plough fields, and fabricate commodi- 
ties. But assuredly we have no warrant from rea-* 



LECTURE II. 



71 



son or revelation for believing that any portion of the 
people are bound to dedicate their whole lives and 
energies, aided by all mechanical discoveries, to 
these ends, as their proper business, to the neglect 
of the study of the works and will of the Creator ? 
Has man been permitted to discover the steam-en- 
gine, and apply it in propelling ships on the ocean 
and carriages on railways, in spinning, weaving, and 
forging iron, — and has he been gifted with intellect 
to discover the astonishing powers of physical agents, 
such as are revealed by chemistry and mechanics, — 
only that he may be enabled to build more houses, 
weave more cloth, and forge more iron, without any 
direct regard to his moral and intellectual improve- 
ment? If an individual, unaided by animal or me- 
chanical power, had wished to travel from Man- 
chester to Liverpool, a distance of thirty miles, he 
would have required to devote ten or twelve hours 
of time, and considerable muscular energy, to the 
task. When roads and carriages were constructed, 
and horses trained, he could, by their assistance, 
have accomplished the same journey in four hours, 
with little fatigue ; and now, when railways and 
steam-engines have been successfullly completed, 
he may travel that distance, without any bodily fa- 
tigue whatever, in an hour and a half : And I ask, 
For what purpose has Providence bestowed the nine 
hours, which are thus set free as spare time to the 
individual ? I humbly answer. For the purpose of 
cultivating his rational nature. Again ; before steam- 
engines were applied to spinning and weaving, a 
7* 



72 LECTURE II. 

human being would have required to labor, say for 
a month, in order to produce linen, woollen, and 
cotton cloth, necessary to cover his own person for a 
year ; in other words, the twelfth part of the time of 
each individual would have been required to be spent 
in making raiment for himself, or, in case of a division 
of labor, a twelfth part of the population would have 
been required to be constantly engaged in this employ- 
ment : by the application of steam, the same ends 
may be gained in a day. I repeat the inquiry, For 
what purpose has Providence bestowed the twenty- 
nine days out of the month, set free by the invention 
of the steam-engine and machinery? These pro- 
portions are not stated as statistically correct, but as 
mere illustrations of a proposition, that every discov- 
ery in natural science, and invention in mechanics, 
has a direct tendency to increase the leisure of man, 
and to enable him to provide for his physical wants> 
with less laborious exertion. 

The question recurs, whether, in thus favoring the 
human race, the object of Providence be, to enable 
only a portion of them to enjoy the highest luxuries, 
while the mass shall continue laboring animals; or 
whether it be not to enable all to cultivate and enjoy 
their rational nature ? 

In proportion as mechanical inventions shall be 
generally diffused over the world, they will increase 
the powers of production to such an extent, as to 
supply, by moderate labor, every want of man, and 
then the great body of the people will find them- 
selves in possession of reasonable leisure, in spite of 



LECTURE II. 73 

every exertion to avoid it. Great misery will prob- 
ably be suffered in persevering in the present course 
of action, before their eyes shall be opened to this re- 
sult. The first effect of these stupendous mechanical 
inventions threatens to be to accumulate great wealth 
in the hands of few, without proportionally abridg- 
ing the toil, or adding greatly to the comforts of the 
many. This process of elevating a part of the com- 
munity to affluence and power, and degrading the 
rest, threatens to proceed till the disparity of condi- 
tion shall have become intolerable to both, the la- 
borer being utterly oppressed, and the higher class- 
es harassed by insecurity. Then, probably, the 
idea may occur, that the real benefit of physical dis- 
covery is to give leisure to the mass of the people, 
and that leisure for mental improvement is the first 
condition of true civilization, knowledge being the 
second. The science of human nature will enable 
men at length to profit by exemption from excessive 
toil; and it may be hoped that, in the course of 
time, the notion of man being really a rational crea- 
ture, may meet with general countenance, and that 
sincere attempts may be made to render all ranks 
prosperous and happy, by institutions founded on the 
basis of the superior facuhies.* 

*I regret to learn that in some districts of England, the op- 
eratives have resolved to abridge their labor, but to permit no 
diminution of their pay : they have demanded for eight hours' 
work the wages hitherto paid for tha labor of twelve hours. 
This proposal is unreasonable and unjust, and cannot be suc- 
cessful. They ought in the first year to demand one hours' 
leisure and abate one hour's wages. If they applied that hour 



74 LECTURE ir. 

The same means will lead to the realization of 
practical Christianity. An individual whose active 
existence is engrossed by mere bodily labor, or by 
the pursuits of gain or ambition, lives under the pre- 
dominance of faculties that do not produce the per- 
fect Christian character. The true practical Chris- 
tian possesses a vigorous and enlightened intellect, 
and moral affections glowing with gratitude to God 
and love to man ; but how can the people at large 
be enabled to realize this condition of mind, if stim- 
ulus for the intellect and the nobler sentiments be ex- 
cluded by the daily routine of their occupations ? 

If the notions now advocated should ever prevail, 
it will be seen that the experience of past ages af- 
tords no sufficient reasons for limiting our estimate of 
man's capabilities of civilization, because he is yet 
only in the infancy of his existence. I traced out 
the long and gradual preparation of the globe for 
man : he appears to be destined to advance only by 
stages to the highest condition of his moral and in- 
tellectual nature, and he is yet only in the beginning 
of his career. Although a knowledge of external 
nature, and of himself, are indispensable to his ad- 
well, and acted peacefully and in concert, the natural increase 
of population and capital would in time create an increased 
demand for their labor, and their wages would rise. When this 
happened, they might abate another hour's labor and wages, 
and the same causes would again restore the rate of wages. 
This process might be repeated till the hours of labor were re- 
duced to eight or nine per day, which would leave ample leis- 
ure for mental cultivation and enjoyment. If this shall 
prove impracticable, it is difficult to foresee any improvement 
in the condition of the great body of the people. 



LECTURE II. 75 

vancement to his true station as a rational being, yet 
400 years have not elapsed since the arts of printing 
and engraving were invented, without which, knowl- 
edge could not be disseminated through the mass of 
mankind ; and, up to the present hour, the art of 
reading is by no means general over the world — so 
that, even now, the means of calling man's rational 
nature into activity, although discovered, are but very 
imperfectly applied. It is only five or six centuries 
since the mariner's compass was discovered in Eu- 
rope, without which even philosophers could not as- 
certain the most common facts regarding the size, 
form, and productions of the earth. It is only 340 
years since one-half of the habitable globe, America, 
became known to the other half; and considerable 
portions of it are yet unknown even to the best in- 
formed inquirers. It is little more than 200 
years since the true theory of the circulation of the 
blood was discovered ; previously to which it was 
impossible even for physicians to form any correct 
idea of the uses of many of man's corporeal organs, 
and of their relations to external nature. It is only 
between forty and fifty years since the true functions 
of the brain and nervous system were discovered ; 
before which we possessed no adequate means of 
becoming acquainted with our mental constitution, 
and its adaptation to external circumstances and be- 
ings. It is only fifty-seven years since the study of 
chemistry, or of the physical elements of the globe, 
were put into a philosophical condition by Dr. 
Priestley's discovery of oxygen ; and hydrogen 



76 LECTURE II. 

was discovered so lately as 1766, or sixty-eight years 
ago. Before that time, people in general were com- 
paratively ignorant of the qualities and relations of 
the most important material agents with which they 
were surrounded. At present this knowledge is still 
in its infancy, as will appear from an enumeration of 
the dates of several other important discoveries. 
Electricity was discovered in 1728, galvanism in 
1794, gas-light about 1798; and steam-boats, 
steam-looms, and the safety-lamp, in our own day. 

It is only of late years that the study of geology 
has been seriously begun ; without which we could 
not know the vast changes in the physical structure 
of the globe, a matter of much importance as an ele- 
ment in judging of our present position in the world's 
progress. This science also is in its infancy. An 
inconceivable extent of territory remains to be ex- 
plored, from the examination of which the most in- 
teresting and instructive inferences will probably 
present themselves. The mechanical sciences are 
at 'this moment in full play, putting forth vigorous 
shoots, and giving the strongest indications of youth, 
and none of decay. 

The sciences of morals and of government aye 
still in the crudest condition. 

In consequence of this profound ignorance, man, 
in all ages, has been directed in his pursuits, by the 
mere impulse of his strongest propensities, formerly 
to war and conquest, and now to accumulating wealth 
without, having framed his habits and institutions in 
conformity with correct and enlightened views of his 



LECTURE II. 77 

own nature, and its real interests and wants. Up to 
the present day the mass of the people in every na- 
tion have remained essentially ignorant, the tools of 
interested leaders, or the creatures of their own 
blind impulses, unfavorably situated for the develop- 
ment of their rational nature. They, constituting 
the great majority, of necessity influence the condi- 
tion of the rest: — Finally^ the arts and sciences 
seem to be tending towards abridging human labor, 
so as to force leisure on the mass of the people ; 
while the elements of useful knowledge are so rap- 
idly increasing, the capacity of the operatives for in- 
struction is so generally recognized, and the means 
of communicating it are so powerful and abundant, 
that a new era may fairly be considered as having 
commenced. 

It has sometimes appeared to me that divines, 
with the best intentions, have obstructed the progress 
of human improvement by coloring too highly the 
representations of man's depravity and weakness, 
and urging in too strong terms his natural incapacity 
for any good. These views repress exertion, and 
foster indolence and ignorance. Dr. Chalmers en- 
tertains more favorable opinions of our nature ; and 
I rejoice in calling your attention to the eloquence as 
well as the truth of the following remarks. * We 
might not know the reason,' says he, in his Bridge- 
water Treatise, ' why, in the moral world, so many 
ages of darkness and depravity should have been 
permitted to pass by, any more than we know the 
reason why, in the natural world, the trees of a for- 



78 LECTURE II. 

est, Instead of starting all at once into the full efflor- 
escense and staleliness of their manhood, have to 
make their slow and laborious advancement to matu- 
rity, cradled in storms, and alternately drooping or 
expanding with the vicissitudes of the seasons. But 
though unable to scan all the cycles eiilier of the 
moral or natural economy, yet we may recognize 
such influences at work, as, when multiplied and de- 
veloped to the uttermost, are abundantly capable of 
regenerating the world. One of the likeliest of these 
influences is the power of education, to the perfect- 
ing of which so many minds are earnestly directed at 
this moment, and for the general acceptance of which 
in society, we have a guarantee in the strongest af- 
fections and fondest wishes of the fathers and mothers 
of families.' (Vol. i. p. 186.) 

Add to these reasons, for hoping well of our na- 
ture, the discovery, that the capacity for civilization 
may be increased by exercising the moral and intellec- 
tual faculties, in conformity with the laws of organiza- 
tion, a fact which phrenology brings to light,* and the 
happiest results may be anticipated in regard to hu- 
man improvement. History represents man as hav- 
ing been hitherto a blind, passionate, fighting animal, 
rather than a rational and moral being ; and even 
now we do not feel entirely secure against a recur- 

* The power of manifesting the mental faculties increases 
in proportion to the size and improvement in the constitution 
of the organs by moans of which they :ici ; and exercise of 
these organs h;is a tendency both to increase their volume 
and ameliorate their ., ality. 



LECTURE II, 79 

rence of such atrocious enormities. Yet fighting 
and plundering are calculated to gratify only a few 
of the human faculties, and these the lowest in the 
scale ; while they outrage the higher and better feel- 
ings. In proportion as the knowledge of our true 
good, and of the real relations of our nature to the 
external world, shall increase, the appetite for war 
will diminish ; and it must entirely cease whenever 
Christian morality shall be generally acknowledged 
to be the practical rule which man is bound, and al- 
so most interested for the sake of his own happiness, 
to obey. 

The objection has been stated, that, even in the 
most improved condition of the great body of the 
people, there will still be a considerable proportion 
of them so deficient in talent, so incapable of im- 
provement, and so ignorant, that their labor will be 
worth little ; that, as they must obtain subsistence, 
no alternative will be left to them but to make up 
by long hours of exertion what they want in skill ; 
and that their long-continued labor, furnished at a 
cheap rate, will affect all the classes above them, 
and indeed prevent the views now taken from ever 
being generally realized. This objection resolves 
itself inlo the proposition, That the people have 
been destined by the Creator to be laboring ani- 
mals, and that, from their inherent mental defects, 
they are incapable generally of being raised to any 
more honorable station ; which is just the great point 
at issue between the old and the new philosophy. 
If mankind at large ( for the industrious classes con- 
8 



80 LECTURE II. 

stitute so very great a majority of the race, that I 
may be allowed to speak of them as the whole,) had 
been intended for mere hewers of wood and drawers 
of water, I do not believe that the moral and intel- 
lectual faculties which they unquestionably possess, 
would have been bestowed on them ; and as they 
do enjoy the rudiments of all the feelings and ca- 
pacities which adorn the highest of the race, and as 
these faculties themselves are improvable, I do not 
subscribe to the doctrine of the permanent incapaci- 
ty of the race. I consider them, in successive gene- 
rations, quite capable of learning to act as rational 
beings ; and whenever the great majority of them 
shall have acquired a sense of the true dignity of 
their nature, and a relish for the enjoyments afford- 
ed by their higher capacities, they will become capa- 
ble of so regulating the supply of labor in reference 
to the demand, as to obtain the means of subsistence 
in return for moderate exertion. In short, I hope 
that few of the imbeciles alluded to in the objection 
will exist ; and that these few will be carried along 
by the multitude of generous and enlightened minds 
which will exist around them. The Creator is wise 
and good ; and as He has bestowed moral and intel- 
lectual faculties on all sane individuals, it cannot be 
his intention that the majority of mankind should 
grub for ever in the mire of mere animal gratifica- 
tion. 

At the same time, there is great force in that ob- 
jection, considered in reference to the present and 
several succeeding generations. In throwing out 



LECTURE ir. 81 

the views contained in these lectures, I embrace 
centuries of time. I see the slow progress of the 
human race in the past, and do not anticipate mira- 
cles for the future. If a sound principle is develop- 
ed — one having its roots in nature — there is a 
certainty that it will wax strong and bear fruit in due 
season ; but that season, from the character of the 
plant, is a distant one. All who aim at benefiting 
mankind, ought to keep this truth constantly in view. 
Almost every scheme is judged of by its effects on 
the living generation ; whereas, no great fountain of 
happiness ever flowed clear at first, or yielded its 
full sweets to the generation who discovered it. 
The world scarcely yet enjoys the benefits of Chris- 
tianity ; it is only developing its power, and hun- 
dreds of years may elapse before its blessed spirit 
shall fully pervade all the transactions of human life. 
I do not expect to see the principles advocated 
in these lectures generally reduced to practice in this 
age; but if they be founded in nature, they will in 
time vindicate their own might. 

It is now an established principle in political econ- 
omy, that Government ought not to interfere with 
industry. This maxim was highly necessary when 
governors were grossly ignorant of all the natural 
laws which regulate production and the private con- 
duct of men ; because their enactments, in general, 
were then abortions ; they often did much harm, 
and rarely good. But if the science of human na- 
ture were once fully and clearly developed, it is 
probable that this rule might, with great advantage, 



82 LECTURE II. 

be relaxed, and that the legislature might con- 
siderably hasten beneficial results, by adding the 
constraining authority of human laws to enactments 
already proclaimed by the Creator. Natural laws 
do exist, and the Creator punishes if they are not 
obeyed. The evils of life are these punishments. 
Now, if the great body of intelligent men in any 
state saw clearly that a course of action pursued by 
the ill-informed of their fellow-subjects was the 
source of continual suffering not only to the evil- 
doers themselves, but to the whole community, it ap- 
pears to me allowable, that they should stop its con- 
tinuance by legislative enactment. If the majority 
of the middle classes resident in towns were to peti- 
tion Parliament, at present, to order shops in general 
to be shut at eight o'clock, or even at an earlier hour, 
to allow time for the cultivation of the rational fac- 
ulties of the men and women engng^d in ihem, it 
would be no stretch of power to give effect to the 
petition : that is to say, it would lead to no evil, if 
the ignorant and avaricious were prevented by law 
from continuing ignorant, and forcing all their com- 
petitors in trade to resemble them in their defects. 
If the Creator hath so constituted the world that men 
may execute all necessary business and still have 
time to spare for the cultivation of their rational fac- 
culties, any enactment of the legislature calculated to 
facilitate arrangements for accomplishing both ends, 
would be beneficial and successful, just because it 
was in accordance with nature ; although the preju- 
diced and ignorant of the present generation would 



LECTURE II. 83 

complain, and probably resist it. This principle of 
interference would go much farther : its only limits 
seems to me to be the boundaries of the real know- 
ledge of nature : as long as the legislature enacts in 
conformity with nature, the result will be success- 
ful. At present, ignorance is too extensive and prev- 
alent to authorize Parliament to venture far. 
8* 



LECTURE IN. 



2. Let us now turn our attention to the Female 
sex, and inquire into the provision made for their 
education. 1 regard the great business of female 
life to be the nurture and rearing of children, and 
the due management of the domestic circle. These 
occupations are equally important to women as pro- 
fessions are to men ; and, under a proper system of 
education, women ought to be taught every species 
of knowledge, and instructed in every accomplish- 
ment, which may directly contribute to the proper 
discharge of the duties attendant on them. At the 
earliest dawn of intellect and feeling, the little girl 
manifests this tendency of her nature. The doll is 
then the most absorbing object of interest that can 
be offered to her attention. In maturer years the 
mimic infant is laid aside, but the feehngs which 
found delightful expression in the caresses bestowed 
on it are not extinct. The nature of the woman is 
the same as that of the girl : the conventional fash- 
ions of society may teach her to draw a veil over 
her affections; but they glow internally, and it will 
still be her highest gratification to give them scope 
in an honourable and useful field. If this be wo- 



LECTURE III. 85 

man's nature, her education ought to bear direct ref- 
erence to the cultivation and direction of it : in 
short, maternal and domestic duties should be held 
out as the leading objects of female existence, and 
her training should proceed in harmony with this 
great end. High physical, moral, and intellectual 
qualities, are required for the due fulfilment of these 
purposes ; and I have no hesitation in saying that no 
occupations allotted to man afford a wider field for 
the exercise of the best elements of mind, than those 
here assigned to woman. 

The physical quality next in importance in a wo- 
man, viewed as a mother, is health. The human 
body is composed of a variety of systems of organs, 
each having particular functions to perform ; and 
health is the result of the favorable action of the 
whole, in harmonious combination. Every organ is 
disposed, other circumstances being the same, to 
act with a degree of energy in proportion to its size ; 
and as a disease is the consequence either of under- 
action, or of over-action, of the organs, their propor- 
tion to each other in size is a point of fundamental 
importance in regard to health. By the appoint- 
ment of a wise Providence, a female figure of the 
finest proportions for symmetry and beauty, is, c<e- 
teris paribus^ the most favorably constituted for 
healthy action. If the carriage of the body be erect, 
and the motions be easy and graceful, these are in- 
dications that the bones are solid and the muscles 
energetic, — that the blood is well nourished and 
well oxygenized, and that it circulates freely. If 



86 LECTURE III. 

the countenance beam with intelligence and good- 
ness, there is a predominance of the moral and intel- 
lectual regions of the brain, and the individual in 
birth and constitution is one of nature's true nobility. 
Such a woman, if her intellect were instructed in 
the laws of physiology, so that she might dehberately 
maintain her high qualities unimpaired through life, 
would be, as a mother, a treasure of the highest 
value. 

For many years, the lives of children depend al- 
most exclusively on the care of the mother. Young 
women, therefore, ought to be taught not only how 
to regulate their own habits so that they may preserve 
their health and vigor but also how to treat children, 
both as physical and mental beings. This informa- 
tion would be attended with greatadvantages, wheth- 
er they subsequently discharged maternal duties 
or not. The very study of the structure, functions, 
and proper treatment of human beings, with the view 
of exercising kindly affection towards them, would 
be delightful in itself; and the young students, if 
they did not become mothers, would at least be sis- 
ters, aunts, or friends, and could never want oppor- 
tunities for the practice of their knowledge. Infor- 
mation of this description is not neglected by women 
with impunity. It appears by the London bills of 
mortality, that between a fourth and a fifth of all the 
children baptized, die within the first two years. 
There is no example among the more perfect of the 
lower animals, of such a vast mortality of their young, 
where external violence is withheld; so that woman, 



LECTURE III. 87 

with reason, and morality, and religion as her gifts, 
makes a poor figure in her maternal character, con- 
trasted with the inferior creatures acting under the 
guidance of pure instinct. Much of this mortality 
arises from imperfect health in the parents them- 
selves, so that the children are born with only a fee- 
ble embryo of life : but much is also owing to in- 
judicious treatment after birth. 

One important branch of female instruction, there- 
fore, ought to be, the treatment of children as phy- 
sical beings. Lectures should be instituted to com- 
muni.cate this information, and the basis of it ought 
to be anatomy and physiology.*" The minutiae of 
these sciences need not be treated of, but all the 
leading organs and their uses should be explained. 
It is a gr'eat error to suppose that this study is neces- 
sarily shocking and indelicate. It is so only in the 
eyes of ignorance and prejudice. Lascivious de- 

* 'It is to the deplorable ignorance, even of persons of edu- 
cation, with respect to the structure and f\inctions of the hu- 
man body, and every thing which relates to health and disease, 
that we must ascribe the inability of such persons to distinguish 
between the rational practitioner and the quack. The higher 
classes, especially, hold regular physic and physicians of small 
account. Their idea of medicine is, thati t is an art, a craft, a 
kind o^knack (to use a somewhat inelegant but not inexpress- 
ive word,) which some people are born with, or attain without 
study and by the mere felicity of nature. If anatomy and 
physiology formed part of a good education, physic would 
reach its proper rank. But those who hang with ecstacyover 
stamens and pistils, or fragments of granite and spar, never 
seem to consider how noble and useful a subject for conten:^- 
plation exists in their own frames.' — Foreign Quarterly i?^ 
vieio, No. xxiii. p, 119. 



88 LECTURE III. 

scriptions of the abuses of the bodily functions are 
extremely injurious to the youthful mind ; and the 
enemies of knowledge have represented this to be 
the instruction which I recommend. Nothing can 
be more unlike it. The Creator has constituted 
every organ of the body, and we contemplate His 
workmanship in studying its structures and uses. 
To call this indelicacy, is to libel Eternal Wisdom. 
The Creator has taught the inferior creatures to rear 
their young successfully by instinct ; but he has not 
conferred this guide on the human mother. One of 
two conclusions, therefore, appears to follow. He 
has intended either that she should use her faculties 
of observation and reflection, in acquiring all the 
knowledge requisite for the proper treatment of her 
offspring, or that she should recklessly allow a large 
proportion of them to perish. One or other of these 
conclusions is really inevitable ; because, as He has 
denied her instinct, and as she cannot obtain know- 
ledge to supply its place, without application of her 
intellect to the study of the laws of nature, which 
instinct prompts the lower creatures to obey without 
knowing them, the Creator must have intended ei- 
ther that she should study these laws, or give up her 
offspring in vast numbers to destruction. The latter 
result actually happens to the enormous extent just 
mentioned ; and, if it be the necessary consequence 
of the Creator's gift of reason, in place of instinct, 
to women, I submit to condemnation ; but if it be 
the natural effect of their not having employed that 
reason in a proper direction, 1 say that He has com- 



LECTURE 



ift. 89 



manded them to study His works. If this conclu- 
sion be just, we may rest assured that they may 
safely, and in perfect consistency with feminine de- 
licacy, study the Creator's designs, power, and 
goodness, in the structure, functions, and adaptations 
of the human body ; and that they will not find their 
higher facuhies outraged, but exahed and refined, 
by the knowledge which will thus be revealed. 
Paley draws numerous arguments and illustrations 
from anatomy in his Treatise on Natural Theology, 
and I have now before me a work by Mrs. Phelps, 
entitled ' Lectures to Young Ladies, delivered to 
the pupils of Troy Female Seminary,' United States 
(Boston, 1833,) in which the pious and enlightened 
authoress does not scruple to introduce the kind of 
instruction here reccommended. 

It has been said that it is better to call in the aid 
of a physician, than to study medicine for one's self. 
But I do not propose that young persons in general 
should study medicine. My reccommendation is 
simply, that they should be taught the structure and 
functions of the body with a view to preserving their 
own health, and to enable them to act like rational 
patients in the hands of a skilful physician, when 
they are so unfortunate as to lose it. Every medi- 
cal practitioner, of a humane and honest mind, la- 
ments the unnecessary suffering and expense to 
which he sees his patients exposed through lack 
of this information. The publication and sale of 
works like Dr. Mac aul ay's Popular Medical Dic- 
tionary show pretty clearly that my views on this 
subject are by no means singular. 



00 LECxftlE III. 

It may be imagined that rules for the preservation 
of heahh may be taught without anatomy being stud- 
ied. But all such instruction is empirical. The 
authority of any rule of health is the fact, that Na- 
ture is constituted in such and such a manner, and 
will act in her own way, whether attended to or not, 
— for good if obeyed, and for evil if opposed. This 
authority is rarely comprehended without instruc- 
tion concerning the foundation on which it rests. 
The rule otherwise resides in the memory rather 
than in the understanding; and the possessor has no 
power of modifying her conduct, and adapting it ju- 
diciously to new circumstances. She knows the 
rule only, and is at a loss whenever any exception 
or new combination not included in it presents itself. 
The Professor of Scots Law most acutely and judi- 
ciously directed his students, when reading about the 
law of tide-deeds, to take the parchments them- 
selves into their hands, and to look at them, — as- 
suring them, that familiarity with their mere physical 
appearance would aid the memory and judgment in 
becoming acquainted with the doctrines relative to 
their effects. Philosophy and experience equally 
confirm the soundness of this observation; and it 
applies, in an especial manner, to rules relative to 
health. When a good description of the respiratory 
organs has been given to a young woman, she un- 
derstands much better, feels more deeply, and re- 
members much longer and more clearly, the dan- 
gerous consequences of exposing the throat and 
breast to a stream of cold air, or to a sudden change 



LECTURE III. 91 

of temperature, than when she has only heard or 
read precepts to avoid these and similar practical 
errors. 

Another leading branch of female education ought 
to be that kind of knowledge which will fit a woman 
to direct successfully the moral and intellectual cul- 
ture of her children. This embraces a vast field of 
useful and interesting information. If we should 
ask any mother, who has not studied mental phi- 
losophy, to write out a catalogue of the desires, 
emotions, and intellectual powers which she con- 
ceives her children to be endowed with; — to de- 
scribe the particular objects of each faculty ; its 
proper sphere of action; the abuses into which it is 
most prone to fall ; and also the best method of di- 
recting each to its legitimate objects, within its just 
sphere, so as best to avoid hurlful aberrations, — we 
know well that she could not execute such a task. 
I entreat any lady, who has a family, and who has 
derived no aid from mental philosophy, to make the 
experiment for her own satisfaction. Slie will dis- 
cover in her own mind a vast field of ignorance, of 
which, before making the trial, she could not have 
conjectured the extent. I have time only to say 
that I regard the earnest and practical study of 
Phrenology, or, in other words, of the primitive 
faculties and their scope of action, as an indispensa- 
ble step in practical education. There are few 
mothers who do not sometimes discover wayward 
feelings, particular biases, or alarming tendencies, 
breaking out in their children, when they least ex- 



92 LECTURE III. 

pect them ; and I appeal to their own consciousnesSj 
whether they have not, in alarm and bewilderment, 
wondered what these could be, and lamented their 
own inability to comprehend or to guide them. 
Mothers who have experienced this darkness, and 
have subsequently studied Phrenology, have appre- 
ciated the value and importance of the light which it 
shed on their practical duties. 1 am not pleading 
the cause of Phrenology for the sake of making pros- 
elytes. My proposition is general, that a mother 
cannot train faculties without knowing their nature, 
objects and sphere of activity ; and if any woman 
can find practical information on these points with- 
out the aid of Phrenology, I earnestly recommend to 
her to seek out and to apply it. To Phrenology I 
owe the views of human nature and its capabilities, 
which have most benefited and delighted my own 
mind ; but I am far from pressing it on others, who 
prefer to consider the mind as if it had no known 
connexion with organization. If nature has con- 
nected it with organs, such individuals will meet 
with their reward in disappointment. 

Let us now suppose a mother to be instructed 
concerning the physical constitution and mental fac- 
ulties of her children ; she will next require to be- 
come acquainted with the objects in the external 
world to which these faculties are related. We are 
told that it is a ' delightful task to rear the tender 
thought, and teach the young idea how to shoot.' 
The power of doing so seems to imply some knowl- 
edge in the teacher of the direction in which the 



LECTURE III. 93 

mind will shoot most successfully, and of the objects 
to which it is related ; in other words, such acquaint- 
ance vviih tiie external world as is calculated to ex- 
cite the moral sentiments and intellect of the child, 
and operate on the happiness of the future man or 
woman, in female training, the communication of 
this information is deplorably neglected. It implies 
the study of the elements of Chemistry, Natural 
History, and Natural Philosophy, as well as familiar 
acquaintance with the social institutions of our own 
country, and the civil history of nations. If an ill- 
informed mother have an acute and clever child, 
how is she puzzled by its questions i and if she pos- 
sess any natural sensibility, how keenly does she 
feel and regret her own ignorance, when it forces 
her to evade instead of furnishing rational and in- 
structive answers to its ingenious and interesting 
inquiries ! 

The mother has it in her power to exert ft great 
and permanent influence on the character of her 
children: she makes the deepest impressions, and 
supplies the earliest ideas, that enter their minds; 
and it is of the utmost importance to society at large 
that she should be well quahfied for so important a 
duty. Children who are not gifted with originating 
powers of mind, which is the case with nineteen out 
of every twenty, reflect slavishly, when they grow 
up, the impressions and ideas which their mothers, 
nurses, companions, teachers, and books have infus- 
ed into them ; and of these the authority of the 
mother is not the least. ^ It was said by one of the 
most extraordinary of men (Napoleon,) who was 



94 LECTURE III. 

himself, as he avowed, principally indebted to ma- 
ternal culture for the unexampled elevation to which 
he subsequently rose, that the future good or bad 
conduct of a child depends entirely upon the moth- 
er.' "^ Let women remember, therefore, that they 
may sow the seeds of superstition, prejudice, error, 
and baneful prepossession ; or of piety, universal 
charity, sound sense, philosophical perception, and 
true knowledge, according to the state of their own 
attainments ; and let them also ponder well the fact, 
that the more thoroughly destitute they are of all 
sound information, and of all rational views of mind 
and its objects, the less they are aware of their de- 
ficiences, and of the evils which their ignorance is 
inflicting on another generation. 

In adduion to the branches of solid instruction be- 
fore narrated, women ought to be taught such ele- 
gant and refined accomplishments as they individ- 
ually are capable of learning. These throw over 
the domestic circle a charm which cannot be too 
highly prized. What I condemn is, the teaching of 
music, drawing, and conventional manners, to the 
exclusion of all other kinds of knowledge. An en- 
lightened refined and elegant woman, is the most 
lovely and perfect of animated beings; and no phi- 
losopher, in recommending useful instruction, would 
desire to see abated, by one iota, the graces which 
adorn the female character. 

•Moore's notices of the Life of Byron, 12mo. vol. ii. p. 35. 
Napoleon's proposition is too general. The father's qualities 
also influence the child j but those of the mother do so still 
more powerfully. 



LECTtJEE 111. 95 

TThese views may appear to be so consonant with 
reason that they support themselves ; but as I am 
addressing a popular assembly, I solicit permission 
to strengtlien them by the opinions of three contem- 
porary authors. 

The evils attendant on the imperfect education of 
females belonging to the upper ranks, are forcibly 
expounded in a late number of the Foreign Quarter- 
ly Reviev^r (No. xxiii. p. 127.). 'Nothing,' says the 
Reviewer, ' is more remarkable in the present age of 
mental excitement, than the care with which, by 
most of the prevalent customs and a system of 
fashionable education, the minds of the generality of 
females are consigned to inactivity and utter uncom- 
panionable insipidity. Whilst the expression of al- 
most every elevated feeling is repressed as incon- 
sistent with refinement, every artificial want, every 
habit of selfish gratification, is as much as possible 
indulged. Active exercise in the open air, cheerful 
country walks, a joyful participation of the hearty 
pleasures of any society, in which every movement 
is not taught by the posture-master, or conversation 
conducted according to the rules laid down in books 
professing to teach female duty and behavior; — 
all this would be inconsistent with the general aim 
of all classes to imitate the manners and habits of 
the highest. All kind of reading, except of works 
the most frivolous, is considered ungenteel, or, at 
least, singular ; and any display of deep and unso- 
phisticated sentiment excites universal pity. The 
beauties of nature, the triumphs of science, the mi- 
9* 



96 LECTURE III. 

racles of art, excite no more than a languid expres- 
sion of wonder. To apply the mind to read or un- 
derstand such things, would destroy the apathetic 
elegance which those desire to preserve, who still 
believe knowledge to be a very good thing for per- 
sons who live by it. With as much care as the nat- 
ural proportions of the female figure are destroyed 
by stays made upon abstract principles, is the mind 
cribbed and cabined by custom and fashion. Then, 
universal ambition leads to universal difficulties as to 
fortune; and the only serious duty as to daughters 
is, to obtain an advantageous settlement, which, 
whether gained or missed, is too often thus the 
cause of cureless discontent, injured health, and 
all the nervous maladies incidental to an ill-managed 
mind and infirm body. 

* The system by which young ladies are taught to 
move their limbs according to the rules of art, to 
come into a room with studied diffidence, and to 
step into a carriage with measured action and pre- 
meditated grace, are only calculated to keep the de- 
grading idea perpetually present, that they are pre- 
paring for the great market of the world. Real el- 
egance of demeanor springs from the mind : fash- 
ionable schools do but leach its imitation, whilst 
their rules forbid to be ingenuous. Philosophers 
never conceived the idea of so perfect a vacuum as 
is found to exist in the minds of young women who 
are supposed to have finished their education in such 
establishments. If they marry husbands as unin- 
formed as themselves, they fall into habits of indo- 



LECTURE III. 97 

lent insignificance without much pain : if they mar- 
ry persons more accomplished, they can retain no 
hold of their affections. Hence many matrimonial 
miseries, in the midst of which the wife finds it a 
consolation to be always complaining of her health 
and ruined nerves.' — (lb. pp. 128 — 9.) 

* Knowledge,' says Mrs. John Sandford, * should be 
appreciated by women for its own sake, and not 
merely as a distinction. The superiority of cultivat- 
ed women is in everything very apparent. They 
have been accustomed to think and to discriminate, 
and their opinion is not a mere momentary impulse. 
Their sphere, too, is enlarged ; they are not so much 
actuated by selfish feelings, or so liable to receive 
partial, and consequently erroneous, impressions. 
What an easy dupe to empiricism or design is a half- 
educated woman ! With sufficient acquirements to 
be vain, and sufficient sensibility to be soon imposed 
on, she may be easily seduced from principles which 
she has received only on the authority of others, 
and which she is therefore ill prepared to defend.' 
' — ' Disorder is the accident, not the consequence, 
of talent ; and as it is the more conspicuous, so it is 
the less excused, when accompanied with mental su- 
periority.' 

I conclude this branch of the subject with the fol- 
lowing just and eloquent observations of an American 
authoress, Mrs. Emma Willard. Tt forms part of an 
admirable Address which she presented, in 1819, to 
the Legislature of New York, proposing a plan for 
improving female education ; and which Address has 



98 LECTURE III. 

led to the formation of an extensive establishment at 
Troy, of which she is now the head. * Not only,' 
says she, ^ has there been a want of system concern- 
ing female education, but much of what has been 
done has proceeded upon mistaken principles. One 
of these is, that, without a regard to the different pe- 
riods of life, proportionate to their importance, the 
education of females has been too exclusively di- 
rected to fit them for displaying to advantage the 
charms of youth and beanty. Though it may be 
proper to adorn this period of life, yet it is incom- 
parably more important to prepare for the serious 
duties of maturer years. Though well to decorate 
the blossom, it is far better to prepare for the harvest. 
In the vegelable creation, nature seems but to sport 
when she embellishes the flower, while all her serious 
cares are directed to perfect the fruit. 

' Another error is, that it has been made the first 
object in educating our sex, to prepare them to 
please the other. But reason and religion teach, that 
we too are primary existences ; that it is for us to 
move, in the orbit of our duty, around the Holy 
Centre of Perfection, the companions, not the sat- 
ellites of men ; else, instead of shedding around us 
an influence that may help to keep them in their 
proper course, we must accompany them in their 
wildest deviations. 

' I would not be understood to insinuate (contin- 
ues Mrs. Willard,) that we are not, in particular sit- 
uations, to yield obedience to the other sex. Sub- 
mission and obedience belong to every thing in the 



LECTURE III. 99 

universe, except the Great Master of the whole. 
Nor is it a degrading peculiarity to our sex, to be 
under human authority. Whenever one class of hu- 
man beings derives from another the benefits of sup- 
port and protection, they must pay its equivalent, 
obedience. Thus, while we receive these benefits 
from our parents, we are all, vi'ithout distinction of 
sex, under their authority: when we receive them 
from the government of our country, we must obey 
our rulers; and when our sex take the obligations 
of marriage, and receive support and protection from 
the other, it is reasonable that we too should yield obe- 
dience. Yet it is neither the child, nor the subject, 
nor the wife, under human authority, but in subser- 
vience to the divine. Our highest responsibility is 
to God, and our highest interest to please him ; 
therefore, to secure this interest, our education should 
be directed. 

* Neither would I be understood to mean, that our 
sex should not seek to make themselves agreeable 
to the other. The error complained of is, that the 
taste of men, whatever it might happen to be, has 
been made a standard for the formation of the fe- 
male character. In whatever we do, it is of the ut- 
most importance that the rule by which we work be 
perfect ; for, if otherwise, what it is but to err upon 
principle ? A system of education which leads one 
class of human beings to consider the approbation of 
another as their highest object, teaches that the rule 
of their conduct should be the will of beings imper- 



100 LECTURE III. 

feet and erring like themselves, rather than the will 
of God, which is the only standard of perfection.' 

On the whole subject of education, then, I remark, 
that if society were organized for instructing the 
people, and providing time and means for the exercise 
of their moral and intellectual faculties, as effectually 
as it is for paying taxes or fighting, the progress of 
civilization and the amount of human enjoyment 
would be greatly increased. The Lord Chancellor 
lately most justly observed, that until the people shall 
take the matter of education with spirit and energy 
into their own hands, and with a resolution to accom- 
plish something. Government will be incapable of 
doing any essential service to the cause. The asso- 
ciation at whose request these lectures have been de- 
livered, has been formed in anticipation of the rec- 
ommendation implied in this remark. 1 solicit your 
attention to its objects and constitution, and hope that 
if these merit your approbation, you will favor it 
with your support. 



ACCOUNT OF THE EDINBURGH ASSOCIATION FOR 
PROCURING INSTRUCTION IN USEFUL AND EN- 
TERTAINING SCIENCE. 

In the autumn of 1832, a number of individuals 
of this city, chiefly engaged in practical business, 
who had attended my Summer Courseof Lectures on 
Phrenology, formed themselves into an association, 



LECTURE III. 101 

for the purpose of obtaining instruction in Useful and 
Entertaining Science. Associations for similar pur- 
poses have been founded in other cities, and have 
been partially successful, but not to so great an ex- 
tent as might have been anticipated. The London 
University, for example, is an institution for afford- 
ing scientific education, particularly to the sons of 
persons in the middle class in the naetropolis, who 
are not sufficiently rich to afford the expense of a 
residence at Cambridge or Oxford ; but it has not 
met with the encouragement which its utility and im- 
portance deserved. In most of the great towns of 
England, there are literary and scientific institutions; 
but they also have been attended with only limited 
success. Tn the absolute amount of instruction con- 
veyed to the people, they have fallen greatly short 
of what they promised to accomplish at their foun- 
dation. In tracing the causes of these short-com- 
ings, two in particular attract our notice. In these 
instances, large sums of money have been collected 
by subscription from wealthy individuals, and ex- 
pended in buildings, libraries, and museums. The 
leading founders and directors have been rich mer- 
chants, patriotic landed proprietors, and a few men 
of science. They have provided money, lecture 
rooms, apparatus — in short, everything physical ; 
but they have not been equally fortunate in furnish- 
ing audiences to fill the lecture-rooms, and students 
to peruse the books piled on the shelves of their li- 
braries. Whence has this last and important defi- 
ciency arisen 



102 LECTURE III. 

Some writers on religious and scientific education 
maintain that men in general have appetites suffi- 
ciently strong to impel them, without external ex- 
citement, to seek a supply for the wants of their animal 
nature. Hunger and thirst press so keenly on the 
feelings, that the most thoughtless of mankind are 
prompted, by their importunity, to exert themselves 
to procure food. The piercing winds and the win- 
ter's frost force them to provide raiment. But it is 
argued that the case is quite different with their 
moral and intellectual nature. The human being, 
deeply buried in ignorance, has no painful con- 
sciousness of his condition ; he is stimulated by no 
self-acting desires to feed and clothe his mind ; he 
will remain for ever mentally destitute and naked, 
the passive victim of his animal feelings, unless ex- 
cited by some motives operating from without. 

The authors who espouse these principles, main- 
tain the necessity of established churches to teach 
religion, and of endowed universities to impart 
knowledge of philosophy and science. They rep- 
resent clergy and professors paid by the state, as 
staff-officers and an army of aggression appointed to 
wage war on public apathy and ignorance. It is 
said to be the duty of the State Clergy to go from 
house to house, and invade the dormant inmates ; to 
rouse them with the din of knowledge, and urge 
them to the banquet of religion. Having created 
an appetite for piety, these public heralds are sup- 
posed to deal forth food fitted to every palate, and 
thus to christianize the world. Professors and 



LECTURE III. 103 

teachers, I presume, are expected to follow a sim- 
ilar course of action. 

While there is some truth in the foregoing repre- 
sentation, it does not appear to me to be entirely 
correct. The capacities of the mass of the people 
for instruction have never been fairly tried. By 
their external circumstances they have been trained 
to fight, to labor, or to dissipate; but never to seek 
enjoyment in the cultivation of their moral and in- 
tellectual powers. [t would be as reasonable to 
state as an objection to human nature in general, 
that an individual trained as a divine has little relish 
for agriculture or for law, as to urge as a plea against 
it, that laborers and artisans, whose mental powers 
are blunted by their occupations, have no taste for 
literature or science. Besides, the great body of 
the people have never had wholesome mental food 
presented to them, and their defect of appetite is 
prematurely assumed. If the foregoing views of 
the constitution of the mind and its adaptations be 
correct, the objects best calculated to rouse the in- 
tellect and delight the moral sentiments are those 
presented by Nature in her various departments; 
and knowledge of this kind has never been offered 
to the people and rejected. Drowsy and incapable 
teachers have too often administered husks and rub- 
bish to the public mind ; and, because it has revolt- 
ed at the dose, it has been charged with a distaste 
for all useful information. If the minds of practical 
men could have taken a deep and abiding interest in 
Greek, Latin, school logic, and metaphysics, I should 



104 LECTURE III. 

have despaired of the progress of the race ; and yet, 
until almost the present day, the learned had little 
else to offer to their notice. That they have turned 
with distaste from these studies, is no better proof 
that they will dislike all knowledge, than the rejec- 
tion of wormwood by a child is evidence that it will 
not relish sugar. Before the appetite of the people 
for knowledge can be fairly decided on, 1*^, They 
must be placed in external circumstances calculated 
to favor the activity of their moral and intellectual 
powers; 2c?/y, Knowledge really related to their 
facuhies must be presented to them ; and, ^dly, 
The teachers must be men qualified by nature and 
acquirements to communicate useful information and 
command respect. Allow me to add, that the 
people have never had presented to them even a 
glimpse of the philosophy of their own nature, phy- 
sical and mental ; so that, if there is any course of 
study or of action, written, as it were, in the consti- 
tution of man, and recommended by his Creator to 
attention, not one word of that lesson has been read 
to the people. Teachers themselves were ignorant. 
Phrenology for the first time has supplied this infor- 
mation. 

Even assuming the argument against the appetite 
of the people for instruction to be more sound than 
it is, the mode proposed of supplying the defect 
does not appear to me to be altogether satisfactory. 
After the churches and colleges have been built, 
and ministers and professors endowed, the question 
remains, Who are appointed to arouse and collect 



LECTURE III. 



105 



the people for instruction ? It is easy to say that it 
is the duty of these teachers to do so; but profes- 
sors cannot, in consistency with the practices of so- 
ciety, go into the houses, the streets, and the high- 
ways, and expostulate with the people on their want 
of a moral and intellectual appetite, and importune 
them to come to the banquet and be fed. They 
are remunerated by fees contributed by their stu- 
dents, and they cannot go a-begging for an audience 
without having their motives entirely misinterpreted. 
Great obstacles lie in the way even of the clergy- 
pursuing such a course. There are various sects 
in religion, and various shades of belief. The fami- 
lies who differ from the State-minister will not vol- 
untarily accept of his invitation ; and if it be too 
anxiously urged upon them, they will repel it. If 
the clergy of every sect become active belligerents 
in favor each of his own opinions, they will convert 
the world into a theatre of theologic war ; and the 
minds of men will become the prize of the acutest 
wrangler. The decorum of the clerical character 
requires a modest, calm, and dignified deportment, 
unlike that of solicitation and importunity. Yet, 
unless there be prompters to enforce attendance, or 
unless the appetite already exists to induce the peo- 
ple spontaneously to repair to the portals of the 
church or the halls of the university, the richest 
viands for the mind may be spread out there, and 
no guests be found to enjoy their delicious savors. 
Accordingly, we perceive, that, after the London 
University has been reared, and many other institu- 



106 LECTURE III. 

tions have been completed, the students are few, 
and the good accomplished limited. The citizens, 
educated in words alone, are unbelievers in the ex- 
istence of valuable information, and go on in their 
wonted rounds of labor and money-making, uncon- 
scious of their own ignorance, ignorant of the value 
of science, and without a motive to engage their 
sons in study. Other institutions for the scientific 
instruction of the industrious classes have elsewhere 
shared a similar fate. They have perhaps been 
frequented for a short time, while novelty and in- 
fluential names produced exchement, and soon sunk 
into inefficiency. For these unfavorable results, I 
blame the stinted education given to the existing 
generation in their primary schools. These left 
them sceptics concerning even the existence of use- 
ful knowledge, and defrauded them of all taste of its 
advantages and sweets. 

It is true, therefore, that, in the present state of 
society, there is a vast body of men, who, from their 
circumstances and training, feel no spontaneous im- 
pulses towards improving their moral and intellectual 
nature, and who, if provided with food, clothing, 
shelter and amusement, desire little else. But 
there are also among the people many gifted spirits, 
whose native energies have enabled them to sur- 
mount all the obstacles presented by imperfect edu- 
cation to the expansion of their minds; whose moral 
and intellectual faculties long for knowledge, for re- 
finement, and for improvement in virtue, as keenly 
as their bodily appetites burn for their proper grati- 



LECTURE III. 107 

fications. These individuals have struggled hard 
for the food of the mind ; and they have generally- 
obtained it. They not only desire to advance them- 
selves, but they feel a call within them to become 
apostles or missionaries, to excite their less viva- 
cious and intellectual brethren to improvement. 
This appears to me to be the class instituted by 
Providence for calling the unwilling guests to the 
banquet of the mind. 

All institutions which have hitherto been formed, 
so far as I am aware, have omitted to invoke the co- 
operation of these important auxiliaries. Bankers, 
merchants, and landed gentlemen, whose conse- 
quence and influence originated in, and depend- 
ed chiefly on wealth, have been the founders and 
directors of most of the existing institutions ; and by 
rank, habits, feelings, and inclinations, they were far 
removed from the class of slumbering minds who re- 
quired to be awakened. 

The Association whose cause I now advocate, is 
founded on better principles. If we wished to insti- 
tute a bank, or a railway, or an insurance company, 
we should apply to the richest, most experienced, 
and most respectable citizens, to give us their sub- 
scriptions, their names, and their influence ; just be- 
cause such men would constitute at once the soul 
and the body of these associations. But if our ob- 
ject were to form a society, for conversing with 
amiable but ill-educated men and women on the 
evils of ignorance and the advantages of knowledge, 
and for urging them to lend their aid in support of 
10* 



108 LECTURE III. 

a scheme for instruction, and to send their sons and 
their daughters to be taught ;and if we acted on the 
principles which sagacious men follow in the forma- 
tion of trading companies — whom would we select to 
become the members and directors of such an asso- 
ciation ? Not, certainly, gentlemen who have at- 
tained to eminence in trade, without being conspic- 
uous for their general knowledge ; not persons 
distinguished merely for wealth, and but httle inter- 
ested about education ; not men devoted exclusively 
10 science, and removed by their habits and pursuits 
from familiar intercourse with the busy but ill-edu- 
cated sons of commerce: — No'; we would give 
such an association a body and a soul suited to its 
proper objects, and then we should succeed. These 
are to be found only among the men, whatever their 
weahh and rank may be, to whom Providence has 
given the noble inheritance of active and ardent 
moral and intellectual faculties ; persons who have 
had the appetite for knowledge bestowed by nature, 
without having had instruction placed before them 
by fortune independently of their own exertions : 
men whose minds rejoice in having been the archi- 
tects of their own education ; who know what it'is 
to have been ignorant, and to have burned with the 
desire of instruction ; and who, through many diffi- 
culties, have acquired a considerable portion of use- 
ful knowledge. An association composed of such 
men, will do much good on apparently small means. 
They will form a nucleus, around which all interest- 
ed in the welfare of the rising generation may rally. 



LECTURE III. 109 

They will have it in their power to judge, from ob- 
servation and experience, what kind of instruction 
will be most relished, and what lecturers will best 
communicate it. A few years since, some of the 
Professors of the University of Edinburgh most 
laudably gave popular lectures on their sciences to 
the higher ranks, but they failed in securing audi- 
ences after the first and second years. On inquiring 
into the causes of their want of success, I was led 
to believe that they were two-fold. 1. The individ- 
uals who attended were, in general, not actuated 
by any real love of science, but chiefly by fashion. 
2. The Professors did not put forth their strength to 
open up their sciences to the understandings of their 
audiences, with the purpose of giving them an intel- 
lectual perception of the practical utility and real 
importance of the knowledge which they communi- 
cated. They addressed chiefly the imagination and 
sentiment of Wonder of their hearers ; they aston- 
ished and amused them, but left no permanent im- 
pression of advantage resulting from the studies. 

The present Association proceeds on different 
principles. Its lecturers will keep solid instruction, 
and the enlargement of the minds of their hearers, 
constantly in view, as their leading objects ; com- 
bining graces and ornament, so far as is compatible 
with these ends. 

The members and directors of this Association, 
then, are men engaged in the business of the world, 
yet ardently alive to the advantages of education, 
and desirous to induce their fellow-citizens to em- 



110 LECTURE III. 

brace all opportunities of acquiring it. They live 
and move among, and are connected, by relationship, 
friendship, and business, with the very classes who 
require to be roused and induced to come to the 
halls of science. They are not themselves teachers 
or lecturers, so that they are at liberty to importune, 
advise, and plead in favor of knowledge, in a way 
that no professor can possibly do for himself, to in- 
duce hearers to come to his prelections. They will 
at all times be witnesses of the impressions made, 
and be much better aware of the kind of informa- 
tion wanted, than any established authorities, who 
move in a higher sphere, and hold only a formal 
communication with their ignorant inferiors. 

The Directors will be regularly changed, trans- 
milting always the active management to the young 
and rising of each generation. It would be fatal 
to the project, if the same individuals were retained 
constantly in office. Their zeal would flag; the 
circle of their influence would be exhausted ; and 
drowsiness would seize upon all the movements of 
the society. 

Another advantage of an association of this kind 
is, that it affords instruction cheap. The industrious 
classes are so numerous, that if they will only act 
in combination, there are no mental advantages 
which wealth can command that they may not at- 
tain. As a lecturer, I can certify, that, indepen- 
dently of gain, it is far more animating and agree- 
able to lecture to 100 than to 20 hearers, and more 
exciting still to address 200 than 100. By bringing 



LECTURE III. 



Ill 



forward an audience of 200 or 300, therefore, the 
lecturer will be remunerated by a comparatively 
small conlrlbution from each, and have his pleasure 
in teaching greatly increased. 

This Association differs in its objects from the 
School of Arts, and may succeed without interfering 
with it. The School of Arts is designed chiefly 
to afford scientific instru(.'tion, which may aid opera- 
tive mechanics in their trades ; the present Institu- 
tion will embrace a more extensive range. There 
are numerous classes of merchants and traders, be- 
sides females of every rank, to whom the instruction 
provided at the School of Arts is too technical to be 
useful ; and for them chiefly this Association is in- 
tended. 

An objection may be urged, that only saperficial 
knowledge can be communicated in the proposed 
lectures, and that the tendency of such instruction i§ 
to encourage pedantry and discontent. The line of 
Pope, that ' a little learning is a dangerous thing,* 
is often quoted in opposition to all proposals for in- 
structing the industrious classes. There is much 
force in this objection, if learning be confined to 
mere reading and writing; but it is pointless when 
applied to instruction in Natural Science, which is 
the kind of knowledge in favor of which I am now 
pleading.* ' Learning,' in Pope's time meant an 

*' It would be easy to show,' says Dr. Caldwell, 'that, 
under the government of the United States, a very limited 
amount of school-learning, diffused among the people, is cal- 
culated, politically speaking, to injure, rather than to benefit 



112 LECTURE III. 

acquaintance with Latin and Greek, and with the 
barbarous jargon of logic and metaphysicSj which 
constituted the chief stock of knowledge of what 
were called educated men in his day. Science has 
been created to a prodigious extent since the time 
of Pope ; and it has been brought within the reach 
of the industrious classes only within these twenty 
years. His remark, therefore, is wholly inapplica- 
ble to instruction in useful knowledge. A little of 
such knowledge is better than none at all, on the 
same principle that it Is better to have even one pen- 
ny than to be entirely pennyless. A man who has 
learned two facts is wiser than he who is acquainted 

them. I allude to that degree of attainment, which qualifies 
them merely to read newspapers, and to understand the mean- 
ing of what they contain, without enabling them to judge of 
its soundness. A people only thus far instructed, are in the 
fittest of all conditions to be imposed on and misled by artful 
demagogues and dishonest presses. When party spirit runs 
high, and the political passions become inflamed, they are in- 
duced, by intriguing men, to read papers only on one side of 
the question. The consequence is plain. Not being able to 
judge of the truth of the matter laid before them, as respects 
either the fitness of men, or the tendency of measures, they 
are liable to be seduced Into the most ruinous courses. Were 
they unable to read at all, or did they never see a newspaper, 
their condition would be less dangerous. Demagogues would 
have less power to delude and injure them. In the present 
state of our country, it is emphatically true, as relates to the 
great body of the people, that 

"A little learning is a dangerous thing." 

*The only remedy for the evil consists in the reformation of 
the public presses, or the diffusion of more learning, knowledge, 
m4 virtue among the people. The former, it is to be appre- 



LECTURE III. 113 

with only one. And if the instruction be useful, 
the smallest quantity cannot possibly injure, while it 
may create an appetite for more. 

I deny, however, that the knowledge communi- 
cated will necessarily be superficial. If the Direct- 
ors and the Lecturers do their duty, solid and ex- 
tensive instruction in the great leading principles of 
the sciences may be communicated in popular lec- 
tures. An intelligent student of geography may be 
very far behind a practical surveyor in his know- 
ledge of the localities of a particular county, every 
acre of which the surveyor has measured and delin- 
eated ; but his knowledge of the relative position of 
all important places, may still be accurate, extensive, 
and useful. The popular student of anatomy, and 
physiology may be far short of the skill which would 
enable him to tie an artery or to open a deep-seated 
tumor ; but he may still possess precise and valua- 

hended, is not soon to be looked for. On the latter alone, 
therefore, rest the fate of our government, and the hope of our 
country. Let the community at large be taught to think cor- 
rectly and feel soundly, and they will not only have a secure 
protection against the falsehood and corruption of the presses; 
those sources of mischief will cease to be encouraged. They 
must then choose between reformation and extinction. At 
the present moment, some of our public presses are the arch- 
engines of evil to our country, and a disgrace to the human 

character.' i Discourse on the Advantages of a JVationai 

University, especially in its influence on the Union of the Uni- 
ted States; delivered September 25, 1832. By Charles Cald- 
well, M. D. 

I consider entire ignorance as more dangerous than partial 
knowledge. 



114 LECTURE III. 

ble information concerning the structure and func- 
tions of the great organs, on the proper condition of 
which health and life depend, and understand and 
practically apply the principles thus unfolded. Lec- 
tures have also a very beneficial influence in com- 
municating to the mind an interest in the science 
treated of, and a familiarity with its general princi- 
ples, which enable the student to pursue his re- 
searches in private, with a zeal and facility which 
could not otherwise be attained. 

It has been urged against popular instruction, 
that, by communicaung a smattering of knowledge 
to all, it will prevent the growth of great geniuses 
and profound philosophers ; in short, that we shall 
have a superficially learned society, but no masters 
in science. This is the argument of a common- 
place mind, which has acquired celebrity by ardu- 
ous study of other men's thoughts, and which dreads 
the approach of the vulgar to its shrine of self-im- 
portance and conceit. There is a simple answer to 
the argument. Genius either is, or is not, necessa- 
ry to reach the profundities of science. If it is 
necessary, then genius is an inherent quality of a 
few gifted minds ; it goes on its own way conquer- 
ing and to conquer ; it rejoices in the fellowship of 
human beings, although their progress be but a fur- 
long, while its advances are a league ; its power is 
within itself, and it is not retarded by the presence 
of a multitude advancing in the same career. It is 
cheered by their proximity, animated by their ap- 
plause ; and feels more confident of its reward, in 



LECTURE III. 



115 



proportion as they become capable of appreciating 
its achievements. Genius, therefore, will not stop 
short in its high career, because the denizens of the 
busy world are gazing at its progress in fond admi- 
ration, and advancing in the same path, although at a 
vast and perhaps an impassable distance. If genius 
is not necessary to profound acquirements in philos- 
ophy and science, then the higher the common 
standard of attainment, the farther, must those ad- 
vance who desire to hold a prominent station in the 
public esteem. All the motives of interest and am- 
bition by which common minds are actuated, in- 
crease in proportion as the class is numerous and 
enlightened by whom the prizes are awarded. This 
objection, therefore, has no valid foundation. 

It has also been objected that the study of science 
incapacitates the mind, or at least gives it a distaste 
for business. This is an important objection, and 
demands serious attention. What should we say to 
the assertion that the practice of walking unfitted a 
man for running ; or, that the habit of eating whole- 
some food had a great tendency to impair the di- 
gestive organs ? We would laugh at the absurdity : 
because the man runs by the very bones, tendons, 
and muscles by which he walks ; and walking is the 
moderate, natural, and healthy exercise of these 
parts ; so that while it may well augment his capa- 
city for running, it cannot possibly impair it, unless 
carried to excess. Again, we would say that whole- 
some food is the natural stimulus of the digestive or- 
gans, and that if used in moderation, it is the very 



116 LECTURE III. 

best prescription possible for preserving them iiTi 
health, and that, in fact, there can be no vigor in 
the function if it be withheld. Now, the Creator 
has constituted and arranged external nature and 
the moral and intellectual faculties of man, and 
adapted them to each other, with the same wisdom 
which he has manifested in adapting the stomach to 
food, and the muscles to the law of gravitation. 
The effects of knowledge are, \st, to strengthen the 
understanding, and, 2c?Zy, to enable the mind to act, 
and to judge of the nature of the things and beings 
with which it is dealing. The moderate study of the 
order of creation — in other words, Science — has, 
therefore, the same tendency to strengthen, improve, 
and gratify the mental faculties, that the use of 
wholesome food has to benefit the digestive func- 
tions. A man transacts business by means of the 
same mental faculties with which he studies useful 
science ; and it is pure absurdity to assert either that 
the study of nature is not calculated to strengthen 
these powers, or that a study which is calculated to 
strengthen them, unfits them for business. 

Facts also support the conclusions of reason. 
The Rev. J. R. Bryce, of the Belfast Academy, 
certifies, from experience, that the boys engaged in 
studying Natural History learned their other lessons 
with the greatest alacrity } and a successful private 
teacher in Edinburgh has declared, that those 
among his pupils who are permitted to attend to 
science, outstrip those who do not, even in the 
study of Greek and Latin. 



LECTURE III. 117 

'The sources of the prevalent errors on this head 
can be easily traced. If young persons give them- 
selves up to the excessive and exclusive study of 
works of fiction and imagination, or the fine arts, 
they impair their relish for, and also their powers of 
conducting, practical business ; and the reasons are 
obvious. Works of fiction are addressed to a great 
extent to the propensities and inferior sentiments. 
The recital of horrors exercises Destructiveness ; the 
description of wild and mysterious events arouses 
Wonder, Cautiousness, and Secretiveness ; and 
images of Beauty and loveliness stimulate Ideal- 
ity : but business is not transacted by any of these 
faculties. When they become- highly active, the 
transition to sober observation and reflection is pain- 
ful and distasteful, and business is disliked. The 
exclusive study of the Fine Arts exercises Ideality, 
the higher sentiments, and several of the intellectual 
powers ; and gives these great refinement and sus- 
ceptibiUty : but it leaves many of the subordinate 
feelings and some of the reflecting faculties uncul- 
tivated ; while the whole objects with which it is 
conversant, belong to the world of imagination. 
This study, therefore, when exclusive, both unfits 
the faculties for practical business, and withholds 
ideas connected with worldly affairs. But the study 
of science does not rouse any of the inferior propen- 
sities, and does not excite exclusively tlie imagina- 
tion : on the contrary, it exercises the intellectual 
facuhies and the moral sentiments ; and as these 
are the very powers by which business is accom- 



118 LECTURE III. 

plished, it is an admirable preparation for practical 
usefulness. Those, therefore, who imagine that 
they have facts in support of the baneful influence 
of instruction on the mind in unfitting it for business, 
confound science with fiction. 

But there is one effect of the study of science, 
which I am completely prepared to admit. When 
the mind has been opened up to the great designs 
of Providence, as displayed in creation, and has 
learned to draw its best enjoyments from contem- 
plating their excellence and grandeur and taking a 
part in their execution, there will be a distaste for 
excessive and exclusive money-grubbing, and for 
the present long and toilsome hours of attendance 
at the manufactory, the shop, and the counting- 
house. These will be felt to be inimical to man's 
moral and intellectual progression, and be restricted 
as a grievance. This result I hail as a positive ad- 
vantage, believing, as I do, that all our wants may be 
amply supplied, and time be still left us to cultivate 
and enjoy our rational powers. Should this result 
in the course of ages follow, it will be an example, 
not of study producing incapacity for business, but 
of moral and intellectual enlightenment regulating 
the plan of life, and reducing it into conformity with 
the constitution of our rational nature. 

The class of persons who would be benefited by 
the lectures which this Association will bring for- 
ward, is one of great importance. They have votes 
for members of Parliament, and exercise political 
power. From among them are chosen the mana- 



LECTURE III. ' 119 

gers of many of the Hospitals for educating children, 
both male and female, in this city. They become 
commissioners of Police, and in that capacity super- 
intend all public measures for increasing the health 
and comfort of the citizens. They are elected 
members of the Town Council of Edinburgh, and 
become the patrons of the City's public schools, of 
the High School, of most of the Chairs in the Uni- 
versity, and of the City Churches.* Society is at 
present in a state of visible commotion. Old ideas, 
and habits, and practices, are fast disappearing, and 
the public mind is bounding forward eagerly in 
search of new and untried institutions. Is it not the 
interest of all, that sound knowledge of physical 
science and the nature of man, should be diffused 
among all ranks, and particularly among that class 
which is influential by its property and respected for 
its morality, and which requires only intellectual in- 
formation to render it at once the ornament and 
safeguard of the state? Mechanics' institutions 
provide instruction in science for operative trades- 
men ; and the Universities open wide their gates for 
the aristocracy : but the middle class of citizens, 
and females of all ranks, although at least as im- 

* One of the first consequences of the instruction of this 
class of the community in science, will probably be the refor- 
mation of the primary schools of this city ; and the second, if 
not simultaneous with the other, will be the ventilating of the 
churches and public rooms : in both of which matters the pro- 
found ignorance of the last generation continues to inflict 
much evil on the present inhabitants of Edinburgh. 
11* 



120 LECTURE III. 

portant and interesting from their numbers, their 
position, and their wealth, as either of the other two, 
have hitherto been overlooked. They are now 
pursuing the only course that can conduct them to 
an equality in point of knowledge with the classes 
above and below them in the social scale: — they 
are coming forward to provide the means of instruc- 
tion for themselves. This is precisely what they 
ought to do. They possess among themselves too 
many well-informed, able, and active men, to ren- 
der it necessary for them to go into leading-strings 
under the great in literature and science ; and too 
much wealth to permit them to solicit pecuniary aid 
from any individuals out of their own circle. They 
come forth, therefore, in their own strength and 
might, conscious that, by union and co-operation, 
they can accomplish their own intellectual regener- 
ation. Edinburgh stands pre-eminent in literary 
and philosophical reputation among the cities of the 
world ; but it would place a still more noble crown 
of glory on her head, could she boast of industrious 
citizens combining talents for every species of prac- 
tical usefulness, with refined taste and cultivated un- 
derstandings. She would then become the precep- 
tress of the world; and prove, by her example, 
that labor, intelligence, morality and religion, go 
hand in hand in promoting the highest enjoyments 
of man. 

In these Lectures, then, I have endeavored to 
show, that man is a progressive and improveable 



LECTURE III. 121 

being ; that he is permitted, to some extent, to con- 
trol the external elements, and apply them to his 
advantage ; that where this power is denied, he may, 
by observing their operation, accommodate his con- 
duct to their influence ; that to do either, know- 
ledge of nature and its qualities is indispensable ; 
that the command to acquire knowledge is thus 
written in his constitution ; and that the inventions 
of science and art are intended to give him leisure 
for studying nature, and for cultivating his moral 
and intellectual faculties. This Association is 
founded in the spirit of these views: — let us all 
hold out to it the hand of encouragement, and pro- 
mote its success. 



Jsfote. — Since the foregoing Lectures were put in 
types, a friend has sent me the following inform- 
ation : — ' It is curious that, at this moment, the 
Statuta Solennia of the University of Edinburgh 
for the degree of M. D., should for the first time 
appear in an English dress. An adequate know- 
ledge of Latin is still, of course, required ; but if 
the graduate show that he can easily read Celsus 
or Cicero De Natura Deorum, no more is requir- 
ed : the great examination goes on in English, 
and the modest student is no longer perplexed by 
having to think and speak in a dead language.' 



APPENDIX, 



Summary of the Proceedings op the Associa- 
tion FOR PROCURING INSTRUCTION IN UsEFUL 

AND Entertaining Science, from its Institu- 
tion, IN 1832, TO 1st December, 1833. 

In the summer of 1832, several individuals engaged 
in mercantile and trading avocations, and who were 
then attending Mr. Combe's evening Course of Lec- 
tures on Phrenology, expressed a strong desire for a 
more extended course during winter, along with lec- 
tures on some other subjects of Natural Science. 
With this view they resolved to form themselves into 
an association for procuring such instruction, at con- 
venient hours, and on moderate terms ; and in order 
to make the public acquainted with their intentions, 
as well as to ascertain the support likely to be obtain- 
ed, they printed and circulated the following * Propo- 
sal for Courses of Lectures on Natural History — 
Chemistry — and Phrenology combined with Physi- 
ology.' 

' The want of the means of obtaining a general 
knowledge of these sciences has long been felt by the 
Middle Classes of society. Hitherto they have pos- 
sessed few opportunities for becoming acquainted with 
a mass of highly useful and interesting information, 



APPENDIX. 123 

which it would be the object of these Lectures to com- 
municate, and which, iti its numerous applications to 
the purposes of life, is calculated greatly to improve 
our physical, moral, and intellectual nature. 

'The regular lectures delivered on the subjects be- 
fore mentioned — besides being inaccessible to Fe- 
males, and being delivered at hours inconvenient for 
persons engaged in ordinary business — are too pure- 
ly scientific, too little applicable to the advancement 
of individuals in general knowledge, and also too ex- 
pensive, to benefit the unprofessional student. A 
wide field of usefulness therefore lies open, which 
may be successfully occupied by skilful teachers, if 
duly encouraged by the public. 

* It is unnecessary to enter into a lengthened state- 
ment of the advantages of a knowledge of the sciences 
above named. To those who have been longing for 
such an opportunity as is now offered to them, the 
mere proposal is enough ; but to others who may 
have been hitherto indifferent about such matters, 
or who would seek nothing more than amusement 
after closing their daily labors, it may be proper to 
state, that the branches which are included in the 
proposed Courses, afford an inexhaustible supply of 
the most varied and interesting amusement as well as 
instruction. Natural Science possesses charms to in- 
terest both the old and the young, the learned and the 
unlearned ; and were the simple and beautiful laws by 
which the whole of nature is held together more stud- 
ied and better understood than they generally are, 
how differently, indeed, would the world be looked 
upon, and with what innocent, profitable, and lasting 
pleasures would those hours then be spent, which are 



124 APPENDIX. 

DOW too often trifled away in frivolity and ennui, or 
dissipation. 

* To some it may appear strange, to many it may 
seem even ridiculous, to see Phrenology in the list of 
the proposed studies; but the projectors of this Course 
are persuaded, that Phrenology is the only philosoph- 
ical system which has any claim to the character of a 
true theory of human nature, and that exhibits man in 
his true relation to the other beings of this world. 
While, therefore, two of the departments of the Lec- 
tures, Natural History and Chemistry, are intended 
for instruction in the nature of inorganic or lifeless 
substances, and of organic and animal beings, — the 
projectors look to Phrenology, combined with Physi- 
ology, for the most important of all scientific informa- 
tion — the knowledge of man's nature as an organ- 
ized, animated, and moral being. Without this, and 
a knowledge of the relation in which man stands to 
other beings, the proposed Lectures would be imper- 
fect; and, judging from what they have lately seen 
— the continued interest with which Mr. Combe's 
Evening Lectures on Phrenology have been attended, 
as also from what they have heard of the interest tak- 
en in similar lectures recently given at the London 
Mechanics' Institution and elsewhere — the projectors 
flatter themselves that this part of the proposal will 
meet with very general approbation among those per- 
sons for whom the Courses are intended. 

* While, however, it is considered of importance 
that all the three departments of the Lectures should 
be attended, it will be left to the choice of Subscrib- 
ers to attend any one or more, at pleasure.' And with 
this view the following fees were fixed : — For Geolo- 



APPENDIX. 125 

gy alone, 7s. 6d. ; Chemistry alone, 10s. 6d.; Phre- 
nology and Physiology alone, 10s. 6d. ; Geology and 
Chemistry combined, 13s. 6d. ; Geology, Phrenology 
and Physiology combined, 13s. 6d. ; Chemistry, Phre- 
nology and Physiology combined, 15s.; Geology, Chem- 
istry, Phrenology and Physiology combined, 20s. ; — 
All the tickets transferable. 

It having soon appeared that the plan was general- 
ly approved of, arrangements were made with Dr. 
Murray to give the Lectures on Geology and Chem- 
istry, and with Mr. Combe to give those on Phrenolo- 
gy and Physiology. In October, a numerous meeting 
of Subscribers and others was held in the Waterloo 
Rooms, when a Report, explanatory of the measures 
which had been adopted, and of the farther objects in 
view, was read and approved of, and a Committee ap- 
pointed for superintending the details. The number 
of Subscribers, even at the commencement of the Lec- 
tures, exceeded all expectation ; and in a short time it 
became necessary, owing to the crowded state of the 
rooms, to stop the farther sale of tickets, and limit the 
number of visitors, although the latter paid 6d, for ad- 
mission to each lecture. The remarkable success of 
this Winter Course will be apparent from the follow- 
ing detailed Abstract of Receipt and Expenditure, 
published in the Directors' Second Report. 



126 



APPENDIX. 



Detailed Abstract of Receipt and Expenditure. 



Tickets 
Sold. 

Geology, . . . 251 . 

Chemistry, . 229 . 

Phrenology, 225 . 


RECEIPT. 

Visitors 
Admitted. 

. L. 69 4 0. 142 . 
. . . 90 . 387 . 

. . . 89 18 6 . 700 . 


. L. 3 11 
...9 13 6 
. , 17 10 


Total 
Received. 

. L. 72 15 
. . . 99 13 6 
. . 107 8 6 


705 


L.249 2 6.1229 


L. 30 14 6 


L. 279 17 



EXPENDITURE. 

Geology ife Chemistry. — Paid Dr.^ 
Murray, L. 52 : 10 : ; Filtino-s " 
in Waterloo Rooms, L. 16 : 11 : 8 ; 
Koom Rent, Door Keeper, and ! y iif; n "^ 
Cleaning, L. 30 : 15 : 8 ; piopor- f^'-^^^ " '* 
lion of advertising and printing, 
L. 8 : 10 : 11 ; Gas, Coals, Station- 
ary, &c. L. 5: 12 : 0, 

Phrenology. — Paid Fittings in"^ 
Clyde Street Hail, L. 9 : 15 : 4 ; | 
proportion of advertising & print- )• 107 8 6 
ing, L. : 5: 10; Mr. Combe, | 
per agreement, L. 91: 7: 4, . . J 

Total Outlay .... 



Surplus on Geology and Chemistry classes, 
Donation from Mr. Combe, 



Total Surplus at 22d March, 1833, in the 
Bank of A. Allaa^ & Co. 



-222 8 9 



L. 57 8 3 
. . 21 



L. 78 8 3 



At the date of the above Report, on 25th March, 
Mr. Combe's Course was not terminated, but contin- 
ued till 25th April, in which intermediate period 393 
additional visitors were admitted; being in all 1218 
visitors and ticket-holders for his class. At the con- 
clusion of his Course, Mr. Combe also delivered three 
additional forenoon Lectures on Popular Education, 
which were well attended, and the proceeds of which 
were added to the funds of the Association. 



APPENDIX. 127 

It having been originally intended that the subjects 
to be successively treated of should embrace all the 
most interesting departments of Natural Science, and 
it being now deemed expedient that these should be 
considered in the order in which they would most ad- 
vantageously or naturally follow each other, the Di- 
rectors agreed with Professor Drummond of Belfast, 
a gentleman highly recommended, to give a course of 
twenty-five Lectures on Botany during the summer. 
These Lectures, notwithstanding several obstacles — 
such as the epidemic which so generally prevailed in 
May, the usual press of mercantile business during 
that month, and other causes — were respectably and 
regularly attended ; 191 Tickets having been sold at 
7s. 6d. each, and 162 Visitors admitted at 6d., — the 
proceeds amounting in all to £75. 4s., as appears from 
the detailed Abstract of Receipt and Expenditure ap- 
pended to the Third printed Report. 

Following out their plan, and considering it prudent 
in the mean time, not to repeat any Course of Lectures 
during two successive seasons, the Directors next ar- 
ranged for the Courses of Lectures now delivering in 
the Waterloo Rooms, on Natural Philosophy, by 
George Lees, A. M., of ihe Scottish Naval and Mili- 
tary Academy — on Astronomy, by the Rev. Thomas 
Gray, of Kircaldy — and on Physiology and Zoology 
by Mr. W. A. F. Browne, Surgeon, Stirling. The 
prices of the Tickets to each of these Courses are as 
follows : — Natural Philosophy, if taken alone, (30 
Lectures,) 10s. 6d. ; Astronomy alone, (20 Lectures,) 
9s. ; Physiology and Zoology alone, (25 Lectures,) 7s. 
6d. ; Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, if taken to- 
gether, 14s. ; Natural Philosophy and Physiology, to- 
12 



128 APPENDIX. 

gether, 13s. 6d. ; Astronomy and Physiology, together, 
12s. ; Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, and Physiolo- 
gy, together, £1. — Visitors are admitted upon pay- 
ing 6d. at the door for the Lectures on Natural Philos- 
ophy and Physiology, and Is. for those on Astronomy. 
These Lectures were commenced in the first week 
of November ; and, at this date (6th December,) there 
have been sold, for the course on 

Natural Philosophy, . . . 248 Tickets. 

Astronomy, 311 

Physiology and Zoology, . 304 



Total 863 sold. 

Preliminary to these courses, Mr. Combe, at the so- 
licitation of the Directors, repeated his Three Lec- 
tures on Popular Education ; and from the great sat- 
isfaction which they gave to the highly respectable 
and numerous audience who attended, the Directors 
farther ventured to request that they might be pub- 
lished, for the benefit of all who take an interest in so 
important a subject. This request has now been also 
very kindly complied with by Mr. Combe ; and it is 
not doubted that the enlightened and practical views 
advanced in these Lectures will speedily operate in 
effecting an important improvement in our public and 
private seminaries of Education. 

The Second Meeting of the Subscribers will be held 
in a few weeks, for electing new office-bearers, and 
considering regulations for the future government of 
the Institution. It is proposed, that there shall be 
twenty-four Directors, one half of whom shall be an- 
nually changed, and an equal number elected by a 
general meeting of the members, — that an annual 



APPENDIX. 129 

payment of ,£1. Is. shall entitle the contributor to free 
Tickets for all the Lectures, to vote in the election of 
Directors, and to enjoy all the other privileges of an 
ordinary member, — that individuals shall be allowed 
to purchase tickets for admission to one or more of the 
Lectures without becoming regular members, — and 
that measures shall be speedily taken for raising, in 
^5. or c£10. Shares, a sum for which interest shall be 
paid, sufficient to build commodious premises, in a 
centrical situation, for the delivery of public Lectures, 
and for other educational purposes. 

Such is a short outline of the present Association. 
In comparison with similar Institutions, its pecuniary 
means have been limited ; but still these have been 
more than sufficient for defraying all necessary expen- 
ses. These expenses, too, have been considerable, 
particularly for room-rent, fittings, advertisings, and 
printing ; for, besides the original Prospectus, the Di- 
rectors have already printed, and widely circulated, 
three detailed Reports, the same number of compre- 
hensive Syllabuses for the three season Courses of 
Lectures, and a Tabular View of the Linnean System 
of Classification of Plants, with explanatory Remarks, 
amounting in all to 6400 copies. Certain funda- 
mental principles have been steadily kept in view, viz. 
that no reliance should be placed on eleemosynary aid 
— that the Directors should be regularly changed — 
that the instruction should be interesting, practical, 
and useful — that it should be applicable to both sexes, 
from twelve years of age and upwards — and that full 
value should be given to the Subscribers for their 
money, as well as a reasonable remuneration to the 
Lecturers for their services. By continuing to act 



130 APPENDIX. 

upon these principles, and by securing the aid of well- 
qualified Teachers, the Directors confidently hope for 
a continuance of public support. 

DIRECTORS. — Alex. Campbell, Hatmaker, 15 
North Bridge Street ; John Castle, Clothier, 
126 High Street ; Thomas Cleghorn, Nur- 
seryman, 4 Prince's Street ; William Cunning- 
ham, Jeweller, 51 North Bridge Street ; James 
DowiE, Hi s Majesty's Bootmaker in Ordinary 
for Scotland, 57 Frederick Street ; W. Fraser, 
Printer, Old Fishmarket ; A. G. Hunter junior. 
Hatter, 50 New Buildings ; A. K. Johnston, 
Engraver, High Street ; Charles Lawson, 
Seedsman, Hunter Square ; John Lorimer, 
Builder, 7 Vennel ; John Mackay, 49 North 
Bridge ; James M'Kean, Seal Engraver, 23 
Clyde Street; Thomas Moffat, Bookseller, 27 
North Bridge ; John Mortimer, Tailor, 25 
Prince's Street; Peter Murray, 26 Minto 
Street, Newington ; Robert Sclater, junior, 
11 South Bridge; James Slight, Engineer, 
Reid's Court ; Thomas White, 14 Gayfield 
Square ; Robert Wright, 63 New Buildings, 
North Bridge Street. 
6th December, 1833. 



